“I think the joke sort of originated as gays drinking iced coffee in the winter,” Stryker explains. But none of that matters, after all what was clear to the corner of the Internet known as Gay Twitter, and to the site Gay Star News, was that this man was just exercising his rights-nay, his duty-as a gay man to drink iced coffee. Honestly, I’m not sure anyone even knows who he is. Obviously there’s no way commenters could’ve known this man’s sexuality. How could an individual in this freezing weather, the tweet suggested, be drinking an iced coffee? It’s obvious, people responded: He’s gay. The picture, fairly innocuous aside from the man’s choice of caffeinated beverage, was shared by the City of New York’s Twitter feed and paired with an incredulous caption. It sounds unremarkable, except that, in 2☏ weather, he was death-gripping an iced coffee. In late January, during the Polar Vortex that held America by the throat with an icy grasp, a picture of a man wearing a massive coat with his hood up while battling his way through a snowstorm went viral.
