Social media have afforded many young gay men the opportunity to explore their identities and practice coming out. The ease of use and the anonymity that can be assumed online has enabled young gay men to come up with different strategies of self-disclosure in social media. The present study seeks to examine these strategies among young gay men in Malaysia, given the limited data on the social media experiences of gay men in the country. In-depth interviews were conducted with six young, gay-identified men to find out the strategies they employed in disclosing their sexual identity online. The analysis of the interview data revealed that the coming-out strategies among the participants mostly resembled those employed by gay men in Western societies, including being out and proud, being out and discreet, and being closeted on social media. The analysis also revealed that the participants held different views regarding the role of social media in the coming out process for gay men in Malaysia. These findings have implications that are relevant to the issues of identity formation among gay men in contexts where homosexuality is still subject to social, legal, and religious condemnation.

Recent years have witnessed significant growth in research on the phenomenon of Asian Boys’ Love (BL) dramas, a new entertainment genre that features male characters who engage in same-sex love relations. However, much of this research has focused on, among others, heterosexual female viewers in terms of their knowledge of BL and their consumption patterns and motives. The present study aims at addressing this knowledge gap by gathering the views of gay male viewers regarding the BL that holds a place in their lives. In-depth interviews were conducted with six gay-identified participants living in Malaysia, with the study informed and guided by the framework of audience uses and appropriations of BL, and with the data collected and analyzed following the interpretative phenomenological approach (IPA) procedures. The findings revealed, on the one hand, polarized consumption patterns and, on the other hand, homogeneous motives, and reasons for consuming BL, including pure escapism, self-identification, and pure entertainment. The findings also revealed the participants’ views on whether the BL drama represented their identity and the real-life struggles of being a gay man in a country where homosexuality is still condemned and made illegal. These findings have implications that are relevant to the discussion of the role of the homoerotic media as a source of identity and livelihood among gay men.