In the past few days, the “Factory Reset” trend has gone viral on social media, often presented as harmless humor aimed at LGBTQ+ individuals. Scroll through any feed, and you'll see the same punchline repeated: queerness can be corrected, undone, or reset when they find a match from their opposite gender. The subtext is clear: there is a default human identity, and anything outside such as being part of LGBTQ+ is a glitch, a mistake, a temporary experiment. This is not entertainment—it's an insult. And it's dangerous.
The trend reflects the same harmful logic that justified decades of conversion practices. It assumes heterosexuality is the default human experience, and anything outside of it is deviation. According to the American Psychological Association, sexual orientation and gender identity are not choices nor phases, they are fundamental aspects of identity shaped by biological, psychological, and social factors. Suggesting that a single encounter can "reset" someone's identity is not only false; it is morally reckless.
The impact is not just theoretical. When queerness is framed as unstable, personal boundaries are treated as flexible. "No" is no longer final; "I'm not interested" becomes a suggestion to be overridden. According to the United Nations Independent Expert on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, denying the legitimacy of LGBTQ+ identities fosters environments where harassment, coercion, and abuse thrive. This is not an act of killing joy—it is reality. Online jokes shape social attitudes offline. Every meme, every funny reel, chips away at safety and autonomy.
And it is exhausting to constantly defend existence against people who think your life is a punchline. How many times have queer people been told, "It's just a phase," or "You haven't met the right person yet"? These are not harmless comments—they are echoes of a systemic prejudice that tells us our identities are negotiable, temporary, or incorrect. This trend, dressed as humor, continues that pattern. It trivializes lived experiences and makes a mockery of self-knowledge.
Some may argue, "It's just a joke." But harm does not disappear when it's dressed as comedy. Normalizing the idea that queer lives are flexible or temporary trains society to treat them as disposable. It signals to peers, family, and strangers alike that identity can be tested, corrected, or invalidated. This is not progress—this is regression.
This trend drags society backward. It revives an era when LGBTQ+ people were treated as projects to fix, bodies to correct, and identities to debate. It diminishes autonomy, erodes respect, and reopens wounds that generations of advocacy have fought to close. Queer lives are not software errors. There is no default human setting from which queerness deviates. Decades of research confirm that LGBTQ+ identities are valid, stable, and deeply rooted in human diversity.
The term itself, “factory reset,” is already deeply problematic. In technology, a factory reset means wiping a device clean and returning it to its original settings. Applied to human identity, the concept is not just metaphorical—it is inherently argumentative, discriminatory, and insulting. Using this term in the context of queer lives escalates the harmful belief that homosexuality is just a phase and can be abolished once someone finds a partner of the opposite gender. It reduces complex, permanent identities into temporary errors waiting to be corrected, a notion both scientifically false and morally unacceptable.
We cannot laugh at this and call it harmless. We cannot scroll past it and pretend it doesn't matter. Society must reject the idea that queer identities are negotiable, temporary, or fixable. Identity is not a software error that an imaginary IT can fix. Queerness is not a phase. It is not a malfunction waiting for correction. Every LGBTQ+ life is the product of lived experience, self-knowledge, and existence—complex, undeniable, and permanent. To suggest otherwise is to erase humanity itself. Queer lives are not bugs, they are real, valid, and deserve everyone's
respect.
Written by John Benedict N. Banday, Insight PH
John Benedict N. Banday, Insight PH is a dedicated campus journalist and contributor. Their insightful writing sparks meaningful conversations and keeps the community informed.
