Joking over I do think that it is worth addressing that 90% of “queerbaiting” is just jokes where queerness (especially between men) is the punchline. JD and Turk weren’t like that on Scrubs to draw in queer viewership, they were like that because the joke was that they were abnormally close for male friendship at the time and haha that’s gay. A lot of examples of “queerbait” are just homophobic jokes from that era of “comedy” that were designed to enforce the idea that men shouldn’t care about each other on anything deeper than a surface level lest they be subject to ridicule. Some people have tried to reclaim these jokes as hints of queerness but that was never their intended purpose. One of the most frequently cited examples of “queerbait” that falls under this brand of jokes is Sherlock’s “one for you, and for your date.” The punchline is them being mistaken for being on a date, and you can reclaim that moment by saying “actually they are <3” but analysis of baiting has to first acknowledge that the intent was always a punchline, not a hint.
