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If you're a horror fan who regularly watches spooky content on YouTube, you'll likely be familiar with Analog Horror. The genre has exploded in popularity, and hardly a week goes by without a new series taking the internet by storm. Series like Local 58, The Mandela Catalog, and Monument Mythos have moved from relative unknowns to viral sensations overnight, gaining massive and devoted fanbases that pour over every second of every video. One of the most fascinating and incredible things about Analog Horror as a genre is how well it can tell queer narratives.

It is no surprise that analog horror is a haven for queerness. Queer creators have been at the forefront of horror ever since authors like William Thomas Beckford put pen to paper and created the gothic novels of the 1700s. The horror medium's strength for metaphorical storytelling has long allowed it to be a place where queer narratives are told, queer fears are discussed, and norms are subverted under a thin layer of greasepaint or wrapped in the protective shell of prosthetics, allowing these themes to sneak past the cultural gatekeepers who would prefer to sanitize them away. Plus, horror has always been a more open and often outsider space, allowing marginalized creators, many of whom would be blocked from working on mainstream projects, a space where they could work freely.

Analog Horror continues this trend in several ways, with its accessibility being the most obvious. Because Analog Horror is an internet-based medium, it allows all creators, including marginalized ones, to bring their ideas to life and get them in front of an audience leading to an amazingly vibrant and diverse scene. This accessibility is further helped by Analog Horror's distinct aesthetic because making a fake Emergency Alert (the most basic form of analog horror and how many creators got their start) requires only simple video editing tools, freely available vector graphics, and text-to-speech voices. Allowing anyone to dip their toes into the medium without a budget, schooling, or prior experience. At the same time, the very flexible and constantly evolving nature of the genre, combined with the fact that no studios or executives are demanding that series conform to a specific template, means that creators can grow the scope of their idea in any way and at any pace they see fit, allowing them to explore what matters to them in unique ways.

The more you look at Analog Horror as a medium, the more obvious its queerness becomes. One of the most noticeable hallmarks of Analog Horror as a genre is its use of warped nostalgia. Most series emulate the look of old Emergency Alert Broadcasts, off-air VHS recordings, and cheap local-access programming. Others use the aesthetic of the early days of digital media, copying the look and feel of early-2000s multimedia CD-ROM software, the pre-Google internet, and early flash sites. But these elements, while nostalgic, are used in a warped, often hauntological manner, giving audiences a glimpse into a dark reflection of our world where these visual styles and mediums remained in vogue and continued on rather than being replaced. This hauntological approach allows creators to discuss big-real world issues via fiction and metaphor, much like how horror writers from generations past used Frankenstein, Dracula, and other monsters to do the same thing. But this hauntological aesthetic also helps capture a frequent queer experience: feeling alienated from your community, recognizing the world around you but not feeling part of it, while also yearning for and mourning a past you couldn't fully experience due to the world forcing you to hide your true self.

Analog Horror's queerness is even more apparent when you analyze the antagonists these series focus on. Most Analog Horror series feature Eldritch or extraterrestrial beings as the main threat. These creatures rarely work alone, and Analog Horror series frequently show existing local power structures, including governments, academia, and megacorps, capitulating to the monster. These power structures often help the monster achieve their goal out of a desire for power or to save their skins, even if they condemn others to horrific suffering. This creates a powerful metaphor for the lived experience of many queer people, where organizations and structures that purport to keep people safe happily abandon queer people due to prejudice.

This queer reading extends to the other characters seen in the genre. While most Analog Horror series lack heroes or protagonists in the traditional sense— as most series are presented as assorted collections of found footage rather than having a straightforward narrative— it is not uncommon for stories to feature people resisting or fighting back against the core evil force or those who have joined its side. These characters are usually outcasts who are overlooked by the heteronormative society they inhabit, further drawing the parallel between queer communities and the traditional power structures that attempt to silence, hide, or erase them.

Also, many analog horror monsters use the power of mimicry as a weapon. Some use simple transformation, where the entity becomes a warped, deformed version of the original person and takes their place. Others use parasite-style methods, where the creature bonds with a human and slowly takes them over, using their skin as a suit and the former person as a puppet. It isn't hard to see this concept and its ubiquity through a queer lens because it heavily crosses over with Body Horror, a genre that has long been acknowledged as inherently queer. In Analog Horror, the double can be used to discuss the painful and confusing experience of discovering and actualizing your identity and how turbulent that can be, especially when it risks othering you from your community. It can also act as a metaphor for the gender performance society expects of people, forcing them to bend themselves out of shape to fit gender expectations and leaving something that, while resembling a human, is a grotesque mockery of the actual person and what they want to be.

Analog Horror is a fantastic facet of queer horror. Like the B-movies of old, Analog Horror offers a space where Queer and marginalized creators can create on their own terms, using metaphor and supernatural imagery to talk about their identities and the issues affecting them, from alienation to unfair power structures. Because of this, expect to see many of today's Analog Horror creators go on to bigger and better things in the future. Until then, the genre is a stunning example of horror's power and inherent queerness.