Twitter rolls out new ‘Fleets’ feature and bottoms everywhere are having a field day
An enema is isolated on a white background. (Envato/erutskyy)
Twitter has rolled out its new “Fleets” feature, and bottoms across the world are having an absolute field day over it.
“Fleets” is a new feature on Twitter that will allow some tweets to disappear after 24 hours, similar to an Instagram Story.
As the bottoms among us will know, Fleet is also a popular brand of douche used by many in the LGBT+ community to make sure everything is clean and sparkling.
Queer people immediately took to Twitter to beg the social media giant to please, please, hire some LGBT+ people before making any further brand decisions.
I can’t tell if we’re all being advertised Fleets because there were NO gay people involved, or if there was one chaotic gay who thought it’d be cool to have the word “FLEET” all over the Twitter app
— Lil Uzi Hurt 🥺 (@lostblackboy) November 17, 2020
Others pleaded with Twitter to tell the world what gay employee had come up with the name “Fleets”.
the gay at the fleets meeting pic.twitter.com/74QsI9IItd— Billy Joe Kiessling (@buhbuhbilly) November 17, 2020
what gay at the twitter hq told them to call it fleets— that kid (@itisthatkid) November 17, 2020
twitter decided to name their version of stories “fleets” now i have to watch gay men make douching “jokes” for the next 48 hours pic.twitter.com/PMobgyu77J— janmichael (@janmichaelxx) November 17, 2020
i been around gays too long i was like fleets 😟
— 𓂃౨ৎ (@pinkfr1day) November 17, 2020
https://twitter.com/TheKalenAllen/status/1328721985333968897
Meanwhile, others wondered if there were any gays on the Twitter team to begin with.
new Fleets feature is proof that Twitter still does not employ a single gay personhttps://t.co/xuoPckx3Cj— @chimeracoder.bsky.social 🦦 🏳️🌈 (@chimeracoder) November 17, 2020
Y are they called fleets? A single gay man on the dev team could have stopped this. pic.twitter.com/zowpxeGH1h— lane (@last__lane) November 17, 2020
Twitter first announced that it was trialling the feature in March, and queer people, needless to say, went wild.
Announcing Twitter’s new feature at the time, product lead Kayvon Beykpour said: “Every day, people come to Twitter to see what’s happening. One of the unique things about Twitter is that ‘what’s happening’ is fuelled by people sharing their thoughts openly, through tweets. But sharing your thoughts publicly can be intimidating!
“People often tell us that they don’t feel comfortable tweeting because tweets can be seen and replied to by anybody, feel permanent and performative (‘how many likes and retweets will this get!?’).
“We’ve been listening to this feedback and working to create new capabilities that address some of the anxieties that hold people back from talking on Twitter. Today, in Brazil only, we’re starting a test (on Android and iOS) for one of those new capabilities. It’s called Fleets.”
Fleets will help people ‘join the conversation’ on Twitter, creators believe.
In a blog post on Tuesday (17 November), design director Joshua Harris and product manager Sam Haveson said: “Through our tests in Brazil, Italy, India, and South Korea, we learned Fleets helped people feel more comfortable joining the conversation – we saw people with Fleets talk more on Twitter.”
They added: “Those new to Twitter found Fleets to be an easier way to share what’s o their mind. Because they disappear from view after a day, Fleets helped people feel more comfortable sharing personal and casual thoughts, opinions, and feelings.”
But those at the social media giant did not reference the feature’s unusual – and unfortunate, depending on your perspective – name.
