The same month YouTube officially launched in 2005, The L Word‘s Dana and Alice announced their shiny, new couple status to friends at the local gay bar. It was April, 2005. A few episodes later, they engaged in a steamy make out session in the bathroom of a cafe. Despite not having a Showtime subscription, I managed to see the scene thanks to YouTube user “katalli” and her bootlegged upload, which she published on the site above the caption: “beso de las dos… ”
“Kiss of the two” — my first YouTube video. I was 16 and fully in the closet, confident I wasn’t attracted to men but clueless as to what life with a woman might look or feel like. During those delicate and uncertain years, fan-made YouTube videos of couples on The L Word provided much-needed insight and inspiration into a life that I knew I wanted in my bones but, having no examples of that I could see, couldn’t picture. Those videos gave shape and color to my blurry visions of the future.
I wasn’t the only one. “I feel like The L Word taught me how to be a lesbian,” exclaimed Julia Tier, a Portland, Oregon-based L Word fan who spent high school watching it in the middle of the night, only after her disapproving parents were asleep. Thanks to devoted viewers like Tier, the program became a breakout hit for Showtime. It ran for six seasons, from 2004 to 2009, and was the network’s longest lasting series by its finale.
It became famous along the way for its active online fan communities, where devotees spent countless hours each month on L Word-themed blogs and message boards. After network execs canceled the series, the show’s creator Ilene Chaiken commented on this quality and its influence by saying, “The brand and the social network community will continue to live on and be a destination for lesbians everywhere.”
It’s a phenomenon queer media scholars like Kelsey Cameron, a lecturer at the University of Pittsburgh, are quick to point out provides evidence for “fandom’s inseparability from the larger landscape of queer female life online.” Or as Autostraddle co-founder Laneia Green put it in describing the first time she watched The L Word: “The next day I realized Google’s full potential.”
And while most of that community building took place on fan blogs like The Planet and The Road Best Straddled, for those of us who weren’t quite ready to talk about our love for The L Word with others, YouTube provided a stealthier way to explore. On YouTube, I could lurk, watch clips of those revolutionary sex scenes, and then click on the uploader’s profile to try and get a sense of who she was, what she might be like, and if she was a “lipstick lesbian” — a term I first encountered in the description of one of the videos.
There were videos featuring stitched-together makeout montages between Shane and Carmen, Tina and Bette, Jenny and whoever, Alice and everybody. There were videos of isolated sex scenes on repeat, and others of supercut couples’ stories. Some were meant to articulate a particular aspect of that couple’s relationship, while others functioned as a summary for mid-series newcomers. Many set the mood by soundtracking their videos with heart-wrenching songs by Hoobastank and Celine Dion. Others flaunted their iMovie skills by including a frame with opening credits featuring fanciful text that danced across the screen.
The community-building could be found in the comments section. “Excellent choice and editing, a great and moving tribute to our dearest lovebirds! I’m more than ever a Tibette, since the very beginning :-)” wrote one user below a video entitled Tina & Bett – I’m Alive. Nearly 100 other gushing comments followed, including a 12 comment exchange between two Spanish-speaking users. Though I never left a comment or made a video myself, I felt supremely seen by these users, and that made me feel as though I belonged, albeit anonymously, to something true.
