Connecticut Drag dor Com is Dead

1/3/2025 UPDATE: Kevin has made a post addressing this situation. I’ve attached sections from it and additional commentary at the bottom of this post.

A somber yoohoo today divas…

It’s me, Flaminia. World renowned actress, model, artist, blogstress, and so much more… but I never thought I’d have to be an obituarista…

Connecticut Drag dor Com has died.

A couple weeks ago I posted a parody article about Connecticut Drag and the poll they were running. You should read that one first, it was one of my best. A couple days after that the whole website was down with the following announcement:

I didn’t reach out before posting my parody article because it was a joke. It wasn’t a scathing critique of Kevin, the guy who made and operated the site. Just some light teasing and ridiculous clickbait to promote my own site (which totally worked btw thanks for asking). The main target for criticism was our title obsessed local culture. The egos and desperation some of you have is ridiculous. Like the people who nominated themselves for categories that weren’t applicable to them!

I’m 90% sure my post was not the reason he took the site down. Like he said in the announcement there were “an accumulation of isolated incidents”. I am sorry if my joke came at a rough time. I reached out to Kevin after I saw the site was down. No response. His Instagram is down now, so it’s possible he just never saw. I could email him I guess, but that feels way too formal…

Besides, I have a lot to say about this website closing that I want the whole community to hear too. I wrote and photographed for the site multiple times, so I should get to talk about it.

Connecticut Drag was originally just a few fan pages on social media. Kevin isn’t a queen himself (except that one time Ethel DeLuxe put him in drag), but he used the skills he had to try to help us. He’s an experienced website developer with an earnest admiration of what we do. He had good intentions with this website, even if he had a few lapses in judgment down the line. For the most part, the website was a force for good. It gave us a sense of credibility. It was SEO optimized and professional looking with nice fluff about local performers. It was well organized and searchable (something I’m still struggling with for this site oopsy). Kevin sponsored some shows. He hosted galleries of photos from months worth of events that are just gone now. He explained some basic but important information about what drag is in a time when disinformation is rampant.

He was part of the inspiration for me, Flaminia, to make this website.

He had some great plans for the future too. In an email he sent out (I was on his mailing list) he detailed plans to add a directory of state performers. That could have been a huge boon to the community. I would do it myself, but I’ve got too many biases. I’m not promoting [REDACTED] on my site!

Obviously, the site wasn’t perfect. If it was people wouldn’t have been complaining about it. I wouldn’t have satirized it on multiple occasions. There was a lot of emphasis on the drag race stars that came to visit. I was planning on parodying that at some point with an article here: RuPaul’s Drag Race PA Takes Dump at Connecticut Arby’s, but now Connecticut Drag is dead and I’ll have to find something else to poke fun at. There were the readers polls that ended up just turning into another petty popularity contest. The worst offense, and what got him the most backlash, was him covering events he hadn’t actually been to with some inaccuracies.

What do all of these issues have in common?

They were in pursuit of clicks. Precious sweet droppings from the attention economy.

Maybe Kevin isn’t a drag performer, but I know lots of us that have pulled careless shenanigans for some tasty clout.

Mmmmm mmmm mmmmmm nothing like getting nice and sloppy so everyone presses some buttons in your direction. Feast on likes and comments until you’re just sopping and frothing at the mouth. It’s a sickness of the times, not just for Connecticut Drag artists. We’re all like this. We’re all warped. We live in a society!

You know what’s a great way to get engagement? Callout posts! Passionate and angry attempted character assassinations. The most viewed page on this website by far is when I made a fake callout post about my drag sister Ambrosia. The inspiration for that article was my observation of controversies that had happened just before. That was months ago, and there’s only been more since. There’s such a clear cycle, and yet it keeps happening. More people engage with drama than with actual drag content or shows. So many are quick to dogpile, make loaded statements, and assume the worst of others. I’ve even seen people that were just targets go on to join the next angry mob! I’m not going to say specific ones, but if you’re part of this bubble you can probably think of at least 3 this year.

There’s different reasons people do this. The internet has rotted people’s abilities to think critically and find middle grounds in situation. Algorithms reward snappy judgements, intense emotions, and controversial opinions. There’s a social incentive to take sides in these things too. Especially here in the drag scene. Why wouldn’t you vocally support someone who can book you? Or take the opportunity to promote yourself since you’ve got all these new eyes on you anyways? It’s an even more flagrant display of desperation than nominating yourself for some titles.

At the root of most of these is usually someone who has righteous anger, but it gets projected onto whoever they’re mad at in that moment. They take a systemic problem and make whoever they’re mad at emblematic of that issue.

The Connecticut Drag community is lacking perspective. The whole internet is. You can find plenty of parallels in other online “communities”.

We need to be able to differentiate between people that mess up in good (or at least neutral) faith, and actual bigots that set out to hurt us. Kevin was a dude with a website who liked what we did. He wasn’t a government or corporate entity trying to exploit us. We need to put our emotional kneejerk reactions aside before we go on public platforms to express qualms we have about others. We need to be solution oriented and think about what we actually want long term. I’m not saying anyone should stay quiet when they feel like they’ve been mistreated or misrepresented, but think about what changes you actually want to see made and channel those hurt feelings into productive dialogue.

I get why Kevin wouldn’t want to continue this website. He was doing it out of his own budget and time, the same way so many performers do. So when a bunch of us publicly and loudly turned on him, what incentive would he have to stick around? I wish he had just made some apology post and kept going, or given some notice ahead of time so people could archive articles and galleries. Kevin should have handled this better too in my opinion. At the end of the day though, it was his personal project to discontinue at his discretion.

Nobody involved with this debacle handled it well.

Not everyone is a villain or a victim. There are ways to hold others accountable that don’t require framing yourself as a martyr and the other person as a monster. The stones thrown this year often came from glass houses. Some of the same people that refuse to be silenced have worked a great deal to silence others. It’s oblivious at best, and hypocritical at worst. Believe it or not it’s possible to resolve issues privately! When things do need to be public, we should look past the villain of the week and try to focus on potential solutions to the underlying problems.

How would we want to be treated if we messed up? I’ve never been on the receiving end of one of these mobs (maybe I will after this goes up), but of course I’ve made mistakes and hurt others before. Who hasn’t? I’m lucky that I could talk one on one and sincerely apologize and understand instead of facing the wrath of angry internet weirdos with too much free time. If we want to be taken seriously as artists and professionals, we need to stop handling our disputes like middle school children (and maybe our BOOKINGS too, but that’s a whole separate blog post).

In 2025, Trump is starting his next term. People who actually hate us are going to be emboldened. Maybe we can all resolve to have constructive dialogue instead of stoking petty infighting.

1/3/2025 UPDATE:

Kevin made a post to facebook addressing the controversy. It’s pretty long, so I’ll use a smaller font and omit some portions for brevity.

I am coming on here today… as myself. I needed to take a step back and remain silent for a while to gain mental clarity.

I wrote an article after watching video performances… simply sharing my interpretation at face value… what I wrote was a misinterpretation of what the artists, as trans women, were trying to achieve. I was completely unaware of this until I was approached with anger days later. At that point, I was open and ready to make any necessary changes… No matter what I said, I felt like I was met with hostility and criticism about who I am and how I speak.

You can ask anyone who has worked with me on any of the 142 articles I’ve published. I always tell them, ‘I want to be corrected,’ because I strive to ensure that what I put out is a true and accurate representation of them as artists.

My decision to take down the website was not because of this situation, despite the ample speculation suggesting otherwise. This situation was simply the straw that broke camel’s back, a final trigger in a long accumulation of constant attacks. Every time I tried to introduce something new or positive, it was met with anger from a handful of individuals in the community… this latest incident was the breaking point.

I did not owe anybody anything… Yet, over the past year, many people placed expectations on me and became upset when I didn’t meet them. I started receiving angry messages if I didn’t attend a show, or write about a specific event, or visit a particular venue… I was punished as though I had underperformed for an employer. On a few occasions, I was publicly tagged on social media for not posting content about someone. I was constantly accused of not supporting local drag or of only caring about RuPaul girls…

I had to ask myself: Why am I subjecting myself to all of this when I don’t have to?

I have been labeled as self-serving, chasing clout, hunting for views, or trying to make money off the community. In a sense, yes, I am trying to generate income to sustain the project so I can continue giving back to the community. However, the sacrifices I have made are far from alligning with the definition of self-serving. Many people can attest to the significant amount of money I have contributed time and time again, sponsoring shows, paying entertainers, making donations, and more. All of that money came directly out of my own pocket and paycheck…

I have nothing but an outpouring of love for my community. It breaks my heart to see some of the pillars of our community, people I have looked up to, respected, and whose art I cherish, become so hateful towards me… I am deeply thankful to everyone who surrounded me with unwavering love and support from the start… thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Ok so that’s not everything, but it’s most of it. And it gives me, Flaminia a lot more to say. Initially, when I covered this situation, I wanted to be sympathetic to both sides. Even though I was already admittedly more sympathetic towards Kevin and the shit storm he’s been put through. After reading this statement I’m gonna go ahead and say he fully did not deserve any of this. It’s in my best interest to not take his side, but he’s right and this whole thing was messed up.

I want to apologize again if any of my jokes contributed to the harsh unwarranted criticism Kevin received. I really just meant for it to be lighthearted reads.

Kevin can cover anything he wants on his website because it’s his website. The polls got weird because the community got weird! He was acting in good faith and never set out to hurt anyone. When I performed in the Snatch Game that he sponsored, he split all the profits between the contestants that didn’t win. When I had a new show, he let me write a fluff piece for it to publish on the site. These are things he very much did not have to do but just goes to show the kind of person he is.

I know who incited this incident. I’m not going to say who, because I don’t believe internet dogpiling is a productive way to solve disputes. If you’re reading this and think you know, keep it to yourself like an adult. What I will say is, I know you’re probably reading this and I’m going to address you directly now:

I care about you a lot, but after seeing you get at least half a dozen people blacklisted I can no longer rationalize your behavior. Saying someone is transphobic without having concrete evidence is libelous, and if you keep doing it you’re going to get sued.

I’ve heard you complain about a lot of people, and every time I can’t help but think we all do that. Gossip and not finding negotiations fair are as ubiquitous in drag as the high heeled shoe.

These attacks you incite don’t seem like righteous anger anymore. It seems like you just lash out whenever you feel remotely annoyed.

You’ve done a lot of good for a lot of people too, but that doesn’t really make this behavior ok. You’re a complicated person who’s dealt with a lot of your own shit that you didn’t deserve.

You’re one of my best friends, you’ve helped me with so much in life and in drag, and I cherish a lot of the time we spend together. However, you’ve also acted selfishly and impulsively in ways that significantly hurt people.

K thx love you, bye.