It’s like a feedback loop
When users click on a point on the map, they read a personal story that connects a person to a place and a memory.
“It’s like a feedback loop,” LaRochelle says. “It starts in the physical environment where people are having the experiences that they share on Queering the Map, and then the map in turn frames certain relationships to space.”
These spaces and places range from bars to back alleyways and from schools to parking lots. People’s experiences are just as wide-ranging: bitter laments, broken hearts, joyful recollections — and lots of nostalgia.
Many of the stories, even the happy ones, negotiate between shame and visibility versus invisibility, explains LaRochelle. And many of the places are often hidden from the public eye.
Unlike social media platforms, the archive is not algorithmically governed to generate a particular user experience, nor are users tethered to self-identifying information.
“What works about this project is very much its anonymous nature. People can articulate experience outside of the individualist frameworks of social media platforms.”
A target for the alt-right
Queering the Map went viral in February 2018 after being live for a few months. Six hundred points quickly became 6,500 points in three days. New contributions came in from multiple countries, in many languages. The Outline, CBC, Vice’s Broadly and CityLab all covered the project.
Soon LaRochelle’s anonymity as Queering the Map’s creator had vanished, and as it grew in popularity, the map became a target for alt-right hackers.
“At that point I had just learned how to code. It was set up in a very basic way and there was no moderation process,” LaRochelle says. “I was operating from quite a techno-utopian standpoint where I thought this project would stay small and nothing bad would happen.”
They believe an ultra-conservative bot roaming the internet looking for vulnerable websites added malicious JavaScript code to the site. Queering the Map was inundated with rapidly multiplying pop-ups of pro-Trump propaganda whenever a user clicked on it.
LaRochelle quickly took the site offline and put out a call for help.