Something that entertained me when I would go to gay bars or visit male gay friends was they would make obscene remarks about some guy's basket, the way straight male friends would about a woman's tits. Seems inherent in gay behavior and part of the instinct pattern that sets sexual attraction targets. There probably is something fundamental going on there.
Sexual attraction doesn't just determine whether someone is attracted; it also influences what features become salient. Straight men often notice breasts, hips, legs, or other cues associated with female attractiveness. Gay men, being attracted to men, are more likely to notice and comment on features that signal male attractiveness within their culture—musculature, shoulders, facial features, body hair, buttocks, genital bulge ("basket"), and so on.
What's interesting is that the behavior itself—friends joking, appraising, gossiping, teasing, rating attractiveness—appears remarkably similar across groups. The target changes, but the social pattern often does not. A group of straight men discussing women, a group of gay men discussing men, and a group of straight women discussing men can sound surprisingly alike.
There is also a cultural element. Gay male communities have historically been more openly focused on male physical appearance than many straight male circles. Men are often highly visual in their attractions, and when both the observer and the object of attraction are male, that can produce a particularly direct style of commentary. Of course, not every gay man is like that, just as not every straight man spends his time discussing women's anatomy, but the pattern is common enough that many people have noticed it.
Anthropologically, one could argue that what amused you was seeing the machinery exposed. As a straight man, hearing other men make appreciative remarks about women feels ordinary because you've heard it all your life. Hearing the same style of remarks redirected toward men makes the underlying pattern much more obvious. The script is familiar; only the object has changed.
It's a bit like holding a mirror up to behavior that is usually so commonplace that people stop noticing it.
Yes, and YouTube creators often know exactly what they're doing.
If a creator must keep everything covered to satisfy platform rules and advertiser preferences, they can still draw attention to sexual characteristics through framing, camera angles, clothing choice, posture, lighting, thumbnails, and verbal references. The viewer's imagination does a lot of the work.
That applies regardless of the target. A fitness channel may linger on male physiques and "bulges" while staying technically within the rules. A fashion, dance, or lifestyle channel may emphasize female breasts, hips, or cleavage without explicit nudity. The content remains monetizable, but it still activates the same attention mechanisms.
From an evolutionary perspective, it is not surprising. Humans are highly attuned to cues that may indicate attractiveness, fertility, health, strength, or status. Content creators learned long ago that attention is a scarce commodity, and those cues reliably attract attention even when presented indirectly.
What is amusing is how transparent it becomes once you notice the pattern. A creator may spend ten minutes discussing "fitness apparel design" or "dance technique," while the camera appears strangely fascinated by a particular part of the anatomy. Everyone involved understands the subtext, but nobody says it outright.
Your observation about gay male culture fits into that. Once you have seen men openly comment on men's bodies, you start noticing that the same visual language exists throughout media generally. The target changes, but the mechanism often looks remarkably similar.
Right—and there’s a slightly ironic commercial bargain there.
Advertisers generally don't want their ads appearing next to explicit sexual material, because that can create brand-safety problems. But they have little reason to object to material that merely captures sexual attention while remaining within the platform's rules. In fact, from the advertiser's perspective, getting somebody to stop scrolling and watch is the whole point.
YouTube's age restrictions and parental controls are therefore a kind of boundary: suggestive enough to attract attention, but not so explicit that the material gets pushed into the restricted category.
And humans are wonderfully good at filling in what isn't shown. A strategically chosen thumbnail or camera angle can sometimes be considerably more effective than actually showing the thing—because the viewer's brain supplies the missing information.
So the old advertising principle survives quite nicely in the digital age: you don't necessarily have to show sex; you merely have to make the viewer think about it.
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