i’m gay, bring back pogs

Look, people are always trying to figure out the “gay agenda.” They whisper about it in hushed tones, like we’re all in some secret club planning to replace the world’s water supply with rosé. It’s exhausting. You want to know my agenda? The real, honest-to-god master plan I’ve been working on in my bunker? It’s not complicated. It’s not about global domination. It’s about one thing and one thing only: bringing back pogs. That’s it. That’s the whole list. While everyone else is fighting over pronouns on Twitter, I’m mourning the loss of a perfect game.

My gay agenda is just bringing back cool slammers.

The whole concept of a grand, unified “agenda” is a joke. It’s a marketing term. A way to package up a billion different people into a neat, sellable demographic for corporations to slap a rainbow on. My personal agenda has nothing to do with any of that. It’s about restoring a piece of culture that had actual, physical weight. You remember slammers? I’m not talking about the flimsy plastic ones they started making at the end. I’m talking about the heavy-duty brass ones, the saw-blade ones, the ones filled with glitter and a weird liquid that you knew was probably toxic. They were OBJECTS. They had presence.

You can keep your soulless digital signifiers and your empty corporate platitudes. Give me something real. Give me the satisfying CRACK of a thick metal slammer hitting a stack of cardboard discs on a concrete floor. That sound is more real to me than any politician’s speech. My fight isn’t for a seat at some table I don’t even want to be at; it’s for the right to once again trade a holographic Bart Simpson for a killer skull-and-crossbones pog without someone trying to explain to me what an NFT is. My identity isn’t a brand, it’s a carefully curated collection of Alf pogs in a plastic tube.

Forget Pride, I want the Pog Championship Tour.

Every June, the world vomits rainbows. Banks that foreclose on your house suddenly “stand with you.” Oil companies that are actively melting the polar ice caps want you to know that “love is love.” It’s a hollow, meaningless spectacle. You want a real celebration? A real gathering of the tribe? Resurrect the World POG Federation Championship Tour. No floats, no corporate sponsors, just pure, unadulterated competition. Imagine it: convention centers filled with people who actually care, risking their entire collection on a single, fateful flip. That’s community. That’s stakes.

This is what we should be fighting for. Not for more representation in a sitcom focus-grouped into oblivion, but for a primetime slot on ESPN2 for the pog finals. I want to see rivalries. I want to see dynasties rise and fall. I want to see some kid from Fresno become a living legend because of their unbeatable slammer technique. This is culture. Everything else is just noise. The modern world is a frictionless, weightless, digital hellscape, and the only antidote is the raw, tactile thrill of risking it all for a stack of cardboard circles with cartoons on them.

So, there you have it. My gay agenda. It’s simple, it’s pure, and it’s fundamentally correct. The world didn’t get better when we traded in our pog collections for social media profiles. We lost something. We lost the feeling of a heavy slammer in our pocket, the promise of a game, the tangible proof of our victories. You can have your parades and your hashtags. I’ll be in the garage, looking for my old pog binder. The real revolution won’t be televised; it’ll be played for keeps on the asphalt behind the school.