A critical review of Matt Cullen's YouTube series Our Queer Life, which interviews LGBT sex workers, entertainers, Mormons, cowboys, prisoners, and more.
The new LGBTQ pride flag, which has pink and blue arrows to represent the trans community and brown and black stripes to represent queer people of color.
Whoever designed this flag should be shot twice. In the words of my older brother, it looks the flag of some African banana republic that will only be on the map for 10 or 20 years.
Writers dwell on how to reveal their characters through the details of their dress, their speech, their mannerisms.
In the case of Matt Cullen, the self-styled "freelance documentarian and journalist with [the] queer digital docu-series 'Our Queer Life'," the telling moment arrives not during an interview with a human, but during an encounter with a hateful cat.
Matt is in the projects of New York City to interview a trans woman, who advises him that her cat is "a little hood."
The cat hisses in Matt's direction and makes her intention to maul him known.
Using what I call a gay shopkeeper's voice - a strange combo of camp, condescending, and wheedling - Matt responds, "Oh my God, she's adorable."
"So cute," he says again as the cat continues to aggress him and her owner looks on bemusedly.
"Adorable," Matt finishes as the cat is scooped up to save him.
That's Matt Cullen for you: Even while he's being attacked, he's spouting insincere compliments; he seems constitutionally incapable of saying anything negative.
Case in Point: Matt's Sex Worker Interviews
The Escort
Let's start with Matt's interviews with sex workers, who run the gamut from streetwalking prostitutes to higher-end escorts, porn actors / actresses, OnlyFans stars, and strippers.
As I mention below, interviews with sex workers constitute a good chunk of the content on Matt's channel.
One of the reasons that I refuse to consider Matt a journalist is that he doesn't perform background research on topics relevant to his interviewees' lives (at least, he never mentions it or indicates that it informs his views or approach); he presents no history or data to contextualize the experiences of his interviewees, ever.
Let me start by saying what Matt, in the course of dozens of interviews with prostitutes, has failed to say: The world's oldest profession is also one of the most dangerous - up there with underwater welding and being a soldier on active duty in a combat zone.
At least 60-75% of prostitutes have been raped while on the job (and this figure likely represents an underreporting of true prevalence; basically, if you're a prostitute or escort, it is overwhelmingly likely that you will be sexually assaulted).
The rates of (non-sexual) assault and murder are astronomically elevated for prostitutes, as well.
At least 30% of female prostitutes are underage, and many of all ages are illegal immigrants with no recourse when they are abused.
Further, a strong majority are addicted to drugs and alcohol.
A significant percentage of prostitutes, especially female and trans feminine prostitutes, end up under the "protection" of pimps who often act like boyfriends initially, then force their girls to take drugs until they are addicted; demand all of the money that they earn so that they cannot escape; and routinely beat and torture them when they get "out of pocket."
Although Matt's prostitute / escort interviewees all deny having pimps, this means nothing, as pimps carefully train the people that they are trafficking in how to lie so that the pimp doesn't risk legal trouble by getting dragged into a pandering case.
Matt conducts dozens of interviews with prostitutes / escorts, and not once does he acknowledge the brutal, demeaning realities hinted at by these facts and figures.
As a case in point, let's consider Matt's interview with a bisexual male escort who usually works in Omaha, Nebraska* (video link here).
*I'm choosing this interview because it is fairly recent, which means that Matt has had well over a year of similar interviews to build his knowledge base and hone his approach.
Uh, this interview is titled "The TRUTH About Gay Escorting."
And it is an absolute trainwreck.
For the first seven or eight minutes, Matt nods along as his interviewee glorifies his profession - the easy money from tricks and his sugardaddy, who sometimes takes him horseback riding (face tattoos and equestrianism don't traditionally go together, but I don't know, I kind of like it).
The escort celebrates the ease with which he manipulates such men as he reels them in and then pushes them away when they become too attached.
When the escort compliments his own intelligence, we're treated to our first simpering Matt Cullen comment: "I think some of the smartest people are the people who are in the game [prostitution] because they're street smart."
Right, Matt, the smartest people choose an illegal and incomparably dangerous profession that most quickly age out of, which leaves them with few skills to leverage and ruins most legitimate, longer-term employment prospects.
Let's help Matt out here. After all, he got so close to the aptest adjective when he expressed that it's the smartest people who end up in the game.
Maybe instead of "smartest people" we could use - I don't know - "most: at-risk, vulnerable, exploited, traumatized, abused, stigmatized, marginalized, erased, preyed-upon..." And so on.
Matt never pushes back at all.
He never questions his interviewee about whether he has savings, retirement plans; never asks whether he has a drug problem or has been arrested.
A little further into the interview, the escort confidently states that undercover cops must admit to being law enforcement officers if you ask them straight out whether they are police officers; this is a common bit of misinformation that is absolutely untrue in any jurisdiction in the United States, or, as far as I know, anywhere else in the world.
Matt's face makes it clear that he knows this to be untrue, probably because he's talked to so many better-informed escorts. However, he doesn't challenge his interviewee, and he includes the clip in the finished video without any note correcting his interviewee.
I can't count the number of occasions that Matt does something similar.
It's evident at this point that he simply doesn't care about honest "documenting."
He treats his interviewees with kiddie gloves, using an overly supportive model that lends credence to the typical conservative view that liberals are unable to confront harsh realities.
Ironically, in failing to ask them more substantive questions, he disrespects his interviewees and creates surface-level, Public Relations-type footage that veers away from more powerful, meaningful treatment of the difficult topics that he touches upon.
Nevertheless, the interview shows potential when the escort opens up about his family background.
He mentions growing up in the hood and being relentlessly bullied for being feminine when he was younger.
He describes living in a "warzone" with gangbanger parents whose house was shot up by rivals, as a result of which the escort and his two younger sisters had to move their mattresses to the ground.
There is real pain and sadness in the escort as he describes his background, and he gives Matt a perfect opportunity for a strong follow-up question when he says that sometimes he "doesn't want to wake up."
This is Matt's opportunity to break through the glib facade that the escort maintains throughout the first part of the interview, and not only does Matt fail to take it - he doesn't even seem to notice it coming and going.
Instead, he lets his interviewee once again wax eloquent about easy money.
When his client states that he can see four or five tricks a day, Matt helpfully notes that this is great, "especially because you're topping, so it's not like you're having to take it four to five times in a day," to which the escort cheerfully responds that sometimes, he doesn't have to have sex at all; recently, for example, he made 120 dollars by "p*ssing on two guys first thing in the morning."
Sounds like a dream career, Matt.
Can't imagine anything more fulfilling than my contribution to the world literally being my waste fluids.
Hopefully, you're starting to see why I'm worried about what sort of picture Our Queer Life paints of the LGBT community.
Again, I'm certainly not saying that voices such as this escort's don't deserve to be heard.
But there is a way to conduct these interviews so that they are deep and dignified rather than scandalous, superficial, and disgusting.
Many of the comments for this video were mocking the interviewee, and I'm not surprised.
Matt has done nothing to bring out the pathos of his situation.
At another point in the interview, the escort discusses tracking down a cokehead client who owes him money at his client's workplace, where he records their interaction on Instagram Live as he smashes a candle against the client's head.
Matt nods and accepts this criminal anecdote as though it is the most natural thing in the world.
At no point does Matt ask the escort about whether he feels guilty for taking advantage of broken, lonely men, some of whom are still closeted, many of whom were bullied just as the escort was.
In fact, in over a dozen interviews with escorts, I've only heard Matt ask one question that even obliquely acknowledges the possibility that prostitutes and escorts might be doing something that is detrimental to the wellbeing of themselves and / or some of their clients.
Matt's questions are toothless, and - while this may help him to secure interviews because his interviewees know that he won't ask tough questions - it drastically limits the integrity, value, and reach of his videos.
After watching dozens of these interviews, I've come to the conclusion that Matt either:
A) Doesn't have the chops to ask substantive, thoughtful questions
B) Would rather cover salacious, superficial content because it's easier and gets more clicks
Or both.
The Madam
The challenge of critiquing Matt's videos is that I could write 100,000 words about how fawning and frivolous they are.
Suffice it to say that the problems with Matt's approach extend to all of his interviews, not just to those with sex workers.
During an interview with a madam who runs the Mustang Ranch brothel in Nevada, for example, Matt takes every single statement from her about her brothel's cleanliness, safety, and work environment at face value.
These brothels tend to be fraught environments, with rampant drug and alcohol use; vicious competition between prostitutes; and restrictive rules that often prohibit the women from leaving the establishment unaccompanied (or sometimes at all during the stretches when they are working because hygiene laws require them to be retested for STDs if they leave the facility even for a short time).
Worse, these brothels charge their prostitutes a fee for the rooms and hygiene supplies that they use and for food, STD testing, security, and other services.
Unfortunately, during slow periods, even some of the more popular prostitutes can end up in the red to the tune of thousands of dollars.
The brothels are also known to charge girls fines for small rules infractions and to use other shady tactics to chip away at their profits.*
*If you want to hear a true high-end escort give a balanced account of her time at the Bunny Ranch and other Nevada sex-selling establishments, I recommend the Soft White Underbelly interview with Frenchie, the Hungarian-French-American vixen, who also did a No Jumpers podcast; for my ethical critique of Mark Laita's Soft White Underbelly project, click here.
All of this information is available to anyone with an Internet connection, and yet Matt seems totally ignorant of it - again, willfully so.
I say willfully so because Matt interviewed one Only Fans star who escorts independently, who explained that she no longer works out of brothels because of exactly the issues detailed above, including owing the brothel money due to its unfair financial practices.
What kind of "journalist" ignores an opportunity to ask a brothel owner pointed questions about the abuses perpetrated against the prostitutes that he has interviewed? It's a follow-up dream.
I suppose that Matt could be considered a documentarian in the weakest, most generous sense possible.
However, even most documentarians who embrace subjective approaches acknowledge the need for background research and some attempt at a balanced representation that examines the problems attached to whatever is being documented.
The Gay Bathhouse Owner
In yet another botched interview, Matt speaks with the owner of a gay bathhouse in Nevada, a Chinese-American man who recounts how the bathhouses of San Francisco helped him to come to terms with his own sexuality after he moved to the U.S. for his work as an engineer.
My pulse quickened a little bit when the subject turned from a tour of the venue to drug use among attendees; as I've written about elsewhere, chemsex in general and chemsex fueled by meth specifically is a gay plague, which is driving HIV infection rates back up after decades of decrease and facilitating the reemergence of drug-resistant strains of syphilis and other STDs.
Matt is presented with an ideal opportunity to question the owner about his establishment's role in these problems.
Instead, however, he simply accepts the bathhouse owner's position that if attendees are sober enough to fill out the ticket for their belongings, then they are sober enough to enter and have sex (since he can't "police them" any further than that).
The two don't discuss whether or not protection is encouraged or required, and Matt certainly doesn't press the owner about whether providing a facility for anonymous, impersonal sex ultimately damages the people who engage in it - not to mention the public image of the LGBT community.
Many gay men struggle with finding stable, long-term relationships with loyal partners, and the promiscuous, partygoer lifestyle facilitated by such establishments contributes to this.
Once again, Matt turns away from any serious consideration of the soul-problems that our LGBT community faces.
The Porn Star (aka Matt Gets Schooled, and It Is Glorious to Behold)
Something amazing happens when Matt interviews TV-news-reporter-cum-porn-star* Dallas Steele, who was actually a journalist: Dallas Steele schools him on how an interview should be done.
*I know that this is deeply uncool of me, but I wanted to make sure you don't miss the "cum" pun here. I have so few victories these days.
As he describes his experience at the top of his chosen profession, Dallas Steele is careful to ballast his words with data about the grim realities of the porn industry as a whole.
Steele notes, for example, that porn doesn't pay the bills for hardly anyone.
Out of the thousands of active performers in the industry, he estimates that there are only about 40 performers in the entire world who make a living at it.
Steele estimates that roughly 60 percent of male porn stars are escorts, while the other 40 percent have a vanilla job to supplement their meager income from shooting scenes, which most treat as free advertising for their escorting.
Only 40 performers in the entire world make a living at porn.
It's a shocking statistic that, incidentally, hasn't even been hinted at in any of Matt's other interviews with porn stars, which glorify their profession despite the fact that it regularly pushes performers' boundaries by pressuring them into demeaning, potentially unsafe situations.
Steele further notes that porn stars don't receive residuals, which means that they are left with no long-term financial buffer after porn makes it nearly impossible for them to find decent-paying, "regular" work.
Matt doesn't prompt any of these valuable disclosures, of course.
He sits there in slack-jawed wonder as Dallas Steele essentially conducts a well-paced, rigorous interview with himself.
At one point after Steele shares a story about meeting with an escorting client whose wife is dying of cancer, who gives her husband her blessing to explore his bisexuality with Steele, Matt gushes about how "meaningful, beautiful, impactful" his interviews with sex workers are because of the "healing" nature of the work.
I've come to think of this sort of over-the-top, fawning language as "pulling a Cullen."
I don't want to doubt Matt's sincerity without good evidence for doing so, but something about his manner when he says this sort of thing feels off to me.
Perhaps it's because he never acknowledges the obvious other side of the coin - in this case, that many clients pay for escorts so that they can abuse and demean them in ways that they wouldn't feel comfortable treating unpaid partners.
His skewed approach leaves the viewer wondering about his true, private thoughts on the matter.
I hate to harp on this, but I would pay to watch a series in which Steele interviews everyone who Matt has interviewed.
Steele, who was the second openly-gay TV reporter for the station that he worked for back in the day (the first died of AIDS) and who lost his first partner to a drug overdose, has been in a monogamous relationship for over a decade now; he's late-middle-aged but still in prime shape, with no sign of addiction or other mental or physical health problems.
I'm willing to bet that series would cut to the heart of the problems facing 21st century America's LGBT community in an interesting, human way.
I'm advancing this bad*ss avatar, who I created with GenCraft's free AI image generator, for use in next year's pride imagery. Gay-bashing would stop overnight.
Branding: "Our" Queer Life
It's not just individual interviews or topics that are the problem.
Let's talk about the show's branding.
I don't know about you, but when I hear the title "Our Queer Life," I expect an inclusive picture.
I expect to hear from gay scientists, policemen, professors, construction workers.
On the other side of the coin, I expect to hear from gay excons, escorts, addicts, pornographers.
I hope to hear from interviewees whose lives color outside the lines, combining elements from both the socially acceptable and antisocial / rebellious categories. Many of the most brilliant members of our community walk these sorts of paths.
Out of the first 42 videos featured on the "Latest" tab of the channel's YouTube page, 14 (33%) have to do with sex work, including street-level prostitution, brothel work, escorting, OnlyFans, and stripping.
Another 5 of these videos (12%) have to do with prison, illegal activity such as black-market plastic surgery, and being gay in the mob.
Imagine, for a moment, being the parent of an LGBT kid who comes to you and discloses that he or she is questioning their sexuality or gender identity.
Perhaps you don't know much about that sort of thing, so you decide to do some research and stumble across Matt's channel - only to discover that, apparently, a whopping 45% of LGBT people interviewed on the channel are sex workers or involved in crime of some sort.
This isn't a hypothetical situation.
I grew up in a small, conservative town where that sort of drama continues to play out to this day.
Matt, I should note, grew up in California with very supportive parents, and as far as I know, he has lived there his entire life.
There are many points at which I have wondered whether Matt growing up in an LGBT-positive bubble has resulted in a warped perspective of how the majority of Americans view LGBT people, which, in turn, has rendered him blind to the risks of how he presents our community in his series.
The messaging that won us the ability to legally marry and secured other important rights and protections was that gay people are just like everybody else: We live quiet, normal lives, pay our taxes, contribute to our communities.
We're just like you, and all we're asking for is fair, equal treatment.
By contrast, Matt's channel presents only the fringes of the LGBT community.
There is little about the LGBT community as he represents it that I identify with.
Again, I shudder to think of what the kind of people who I grew up around - conservative, Christian, small-town people - would make of Matt's content.
It would reinforce their worst fears and suspicions, of this I am sure.
Once we're past the sex workers and excons, much of the remainder of Matt's content has to do with famous drag queens and kinky sex, including BDSM and gay sauna hookups.
To his credit, in two out of his hundred-plus videos, Matt interviews a couple of more "normal" couples, including a lesbian couple that met in Bible school, who have been together for 10 years (video link here), and a gay couple, one of whom was addicted to crystal meth, who have been together for 18 years and who come from rough, Latino backgrounds and struggle for familial acceptance (video link here).
However, there is not a single video of an LGBT leader who walked a socially acceptable path to success.
Matt's failure to interview a gay rocket scientist, politician, doctor, actor, or businessman is both negligent and reprehensible.
Pick a discipline, from science / engineering to theatre / film, and gay people have contributed disproportionately to it.
We are one of the most intellectually gifted and creative minorities, and it is deplorable and irresponsible that Matt neglects to represent this facet of our community.
It's not hard to understand why Matt doesn't include that type of content, mind you; a video about a gay bioengineer isn't going to draw in nearly as many viewers as a salacious video about kinky sex in a BDSM dungeon.
But it is awful nonetheless.
Again, it is the next generation, the LGBT youth, who I worry about most when I see this sort of depiction of our community.
Gay but Not Queer
It's significant that Matt uses the word "queer" in the title for his show - but probably not in the way that he thinks or hopes that it is.
When I hear this word in a pro-LGBT context, I think of LGBT people of my parents' generation, who reclaimed the word, which was traditionally an antigay slur meant to emphasize that we were freaks, abnormal, contemptible.*
*On my part, I'm not even sure that "queer" or "questioning" belongs in the acronym, but I'll set that aside for now.
"Queer" had also been used, historically, in reference to spiritual evil ("there's something queer going on in that abandoned asylum").
Some LGBT leaders decided that being different was a good thing.
They threw off the assimilationist idea that LGBT folks should integrate into wider society in favor of the radical position that LGBT people didn't need to, shouldn't have to bow to prevailing social norms - that, rather, we should form our own, separate communities, free of the bigotry and repression of society at large.
They embraced radical political affiliations, including Marxism, that they believed would help to create the sort of improved world that they envisioned.
This sounds like a brave, attractive proposition at first glance, and I wholly support any LGBT adults who choose such a philosophy and life path for themselves.
The problem with this is that, to quote American writer and attorney Michael Nava, homosexuals are the only minority that "get born into the enemy's camp."
Most of the damage inflicted on LGBT youth, which contributes to addiction and suicide rates that are much higher than those of the general population, occurs during our childhoods.
As I've written about elsewhere, there was no group so scorned and yet so frequently mentioned in the area where I grew up.
Without exaggeration, I heard the word "gay" used to describe something negative no fewer than 30,000 times in my youth; I must've heard someone called a f*g at least 10,000 times (lowball).
It is literally programmed into us linguistically that being gay is being inferior, broken, outside.
Because of the unique vulnerability of our youth, we must be especially conscious of how our portrayal of the LGBT community is affecting its youngest members, who might not have the choice to escape the conservative communities that they're born into.
This kind of consideration is crucial at present.
For the first time in a long time, public support for LGBT people is dropping in the U.S.
There are complex reasons for this, including the focus on trans rights that has dominated LGBT discourse during the past 5 to 8 years.
The pushing of a trans-rights agenda that involves puberty blockers and irreversible medical procedures for underage children has damaged public perception of the LGBT community, as has the insistence of some trans activists that wider society bend the knee and accept an outrageous list of neopronouns.*
*To be clear, I am fully, nonnegotiably supportive of trans rights, including social transition for minors and medical transition for adults. I'm totally in favor of using whatever standard pronouns someone is comfortable with, and I will always refer to my binary and nonbinary trans friends by he / she / they according to their preferences. However, I don't believe that it's productive to try to force the rest of society to adjust their use of language to accommodate trans people's preferences, and I absolutely will not use Tumblr pronouns like faeself and druidself, which make a mockery of our community and justify people's belief that we are fundamentally out of our minds.
Another issue is the dramatic expansion of what constitutes LGBT identity.
A Brown University survey from 2023, for example, indicated that 40% of the student populace identified as something other than straight.
Again, the issue with this is that it supports the public fear that giving gay people expanded rights has dramatically increased the percentage of gay people beyond the 5-8% or so of the population that our community has traditionally been estimated at.
Looking closer, though, it's clear that the majority of the people who classified themselves as non-straight in this survey absolutely do not belong to any group that most of us would recognize as trans or gay.
Anyone experiencing any gender identity discomfort at any age - so, anyone other than a testosterone-drenched Chad or a vapid Barbie - was counted as LGBT.
Anyone with any sexual contact with the same sex at some point in their life - so, almost everyone - was free to self-identify as bisexual, gender nonconforming, etc.
It's not just at Brown that the definition of LGBT is expanding.
I've met several couples lately who I consider "straight with extra steps."
One or both members is nonbinary in a minor way - perhaps a man who has long hair and likes to paint his nails, or a woman who is a little on the butch side in terms of her presentation.
They're the new hippies - people who are exploring self-expression beyond what wider society has traditionally considered acceptable.
On his show, Matt supports this sort of construction of LGBT identity.
He interviews people like Alexis Neiers, who was married to a man for several years, who apparently identifies as bisexual, now - she mentions not being content with a monogamous, heterosexual relationship, and says that she would likely be the top in a hypothetical sexual interaction with another woman.
Matt interviews at least one OnlyFans star and one brothel worker who only mention being bisexual after he asks them, "Oh, and you're bisexual, right?"; my strong suspicion is that he asks this because he wants to justify their inclusion on the show.
I applaud anyone who is reconsidering societal norms and expressing themself in an authentic way in their personal presentation and relationships, but doing so does not make you LGBT.
One of the most comforting moments of my youth was when my first boyfriend showed me an article in a major publication that reported on biological research showing that male homosexuals were physiologically and genetically different from their heterosexual counterparts - that we had hair whorls that tended to swirl in a different direction; finger length ratios, which indicate testosterone levels in the womb during key periods, that varied from the norm in a predictable way; functional brain differences that were consistent and predictable.
Reading this article substantiated what was obvious to me, namely, that my gay peers and I were biologically different, and that - counter to the Christian programming of the time - this was not a matter of choice.
I can't tell you the peace that this brought me, and I can't fully express how worried I am that the LGBT umbrella is being expanded in a way that could endanger our community (you can't protect a class if you can't reliably define it, if anyone can join it on a moment's whim).
Again, the sort of definition of LGBT that Matt's content supports is not one that is going to help wider society to accept us, to put it mildly.
Moreover, Matt's show doesn't even reflect common understanding of what the word "queer" means.
Ironically, his focus on sex workers, criminals, and drag queens supports the idea that LGBT people are freaks, outsiders, misfits.
Matt seems to think that "queer" refers to LGBT people who choose to engage in conduct that society disapproves of.
He fails to grasp that "queer" fundamentally denotes a political and sociological worldview aimed at deconstructing harmful aspects of our capitalist, patriarchal society.
Matt doesn't interview any of the dozens of LGBT professors who are queer in the discursive sense, who connect their LGBT identity with Marxism and sociological / semiotic theories about the structure of language and society and their essential role in the formation of identity.
Instead, Matt presents queer people as freaks, rebels, Others in the cheapest, most shallow sense of the term.
It's a dangerous and irresponsible depiction, giving the prevailing societal winds in the U.S. right now.
To close this section, I'd like to briefly mention "Love, Victor," a comedy-drama series that follows up on a film called "Love, Simon."
In this series, young stud and rising basketball star Victor struggles to tell his Latino parents that he is gay.
He navigates his first love with Benji, a rich kid musician and recovering alcoholic.*
*I cannot tell you what it means to me to have Benji's 12-step participation normalized. The idea that a television series' plot involves a young, gay character who is addicted, relapses, gets his sh*t back together, and then pauses at key moments to consult his sponsor is revolutionary. This is the kind of representation, the sort of revolutionary storytelling, that we direly need.
My favorite thing about this guilty-pleasure show is that Victor is so normal.
The only thing odd or different about him, aside from a couple of lovable quirks, is the fact that he is gay, something that Victor seeks to minimize the importance of (he is uncomfortable at the idea of receiving an award simply because he is an openly gay athlete, for example).
Victor's life is the future that I dream of for gay youth - a world in which the homosexual / heterosexual orientation options are no more significant than two different entries on a breakfast menu.
It's a view of the LGBT community that is antithetical to the portrayal of our community in "Our" "Queer" Life.
Credit Where Credit Is Due
Matt has elevated some charismatic and intriguing voices whose stories would have otherwise gone unheard.
If you're unfamiliar with his content, I recommend checking out his series of interviews with Mousie, a meth- and fentanyl-addicted, transfeminine LA streetwalker whose wild life and eyebrows reportedly inspired a movie.
Mousie died of a fent OD in November 2023, and Matt's interviews with this extraordinarily charismatic trans woman preserved part of a powerful story.
Matt's interviews with LGBT individuals who come from underprivileged socioeconomic backgrounds, including Mousie, are among his best.
Even when he doesn't interview them very robustly, the pathos and panache of his subjects carries the day.
Matt is also well-suited to his interviews with drag stars.
In that setting, he's free of the obligation to explore serious issues and can instead focus on catty gossip and wardrobe consideration.
His style is much more suited to this type of lighthearted interview, and he brings to the table a playfulness and an ability to connect with his interviewees and make them feel comfortable.
In Conclusion
Regardless of their position on the political spectrum, most Americans agree that the grave social, political, and economic problems that we're facing in 2024 have been exacerbated and perhaps even partially caused by the decline of quality, objective journalism.
This problem extends into the LGBT sphere, where a new leadership of politically radical liberationists threatens our ability to hang on to the right to marry and the grudging social acceptance that previous generations have won for us - less from violent, headlining activism like the Stonewall riots, and more by living quiet, responsible, productive lives and paying their taxes.
It would be hard to hate Matt Cullen.
I certainly don't even dislike him, although I do have a deep distaste for how he approaches the content that he makes, and I detest how he portrays our LGBT community.
In my view, Matt Cullen is the problem, not the solution; he epitomizes the failure of LGBT leadership to take honest stock of our community's weaknesses.
He is certainly not a journalist, and he qualifies as a documentarian only in the broadest and most trifling sense of that term.
During the first few months of Our Queer Life content, I held back on criticizing Matt.
After all, he is a dancer and server by background; he hadn't studied journalism, and I'm not even sure if he'd attended college at all, for that matter.
However, after well over a year of pumping out videos that get tens of thousands of views because they depict our community in the worst, most sensational light, during which Matt hasn't shown an iota of progress in becoming a serious journalist or documentarian, I think it's fair to look at his content more critically.
Matt Cullen's Our Queer Life interviews are frivolous, disappointing, and - at times - genuinely dumb.
Thank you for reading!
If you enjoyed this content, I'd suggest checking out my two-part series on addiction recovery and prison reform Youtuber Jessica Kent, a diagnosed sociopath (ASPD) whose lies and deceptions beggar belief.
Don't forget to connect with me on Instagram (concreteconfessional)!