Foe Yay/Real Life

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of Foe Yay in Real Life include:

  • You actually know people like this - Even if nobody has ever done this to you (or you never did it to anyone else) you know someone who's done this with someone they hate. It's one thing if they are seen around someone they claim to hate so much in grade school where attendance is compulsory; but another to see people on The Internet and outside of school saying "I hate you" and then intentionally seeking you out.
  • Parodied by The Onion: "Sexual Tension Between Arafat, Sharon Reaches Breaking Point"
    • This was done in at least two skits by the Royal Canadian Air Farce. One was a musical number where they sing the original song "You Don't Bring Me Bagels Anymore" to each other. The other was dialogue-less, as they meet, and in the interest of diplomacy start giving more and more respectful gestures to each other... until they give each other a manly, backslapping hug...and the slaps turn to caresses...
  • Pope Sixtus V (1585–90) confirmed the excommunication of Elizabeth I of England from the Catholic Church and promised the King of Spain a huge sum of money if his Armada was successful in deposing her. He nevertheless had great respect for her courage and determination and is quoted for expressing regret that he could not marry her, because "our children would have ruled the world".
  • Speaking of Elizabeth I and Philip II of Spain—back when he was married to her sister, Philip helped keep Elizabeth alive, and upon Mary's death, proposed to Elizabeth. Elizabeth refused, of course—but she kept a picture of him in a closet in her chamber, and was quite miffed when he married Elizabeth Valois of France.
  • Hitler and Stalin. Stalin obsessively collected details about Hitler's personal life after the war, and Hitler seemed unusually keen on possessing the very city that bore Stalin's name.
  • There was a New Yorker cover that showed Obama and (HILLARY) Clinton in bed together.
  • Cicero and Catiline. This is cemented about halfway through Cicero's first speech when he refers to his bed in the diminutive.
    • Not to mention their portrayal in Robert Harris's (granted, fictional) Cicero trilogy, notably in the second book, Lustrum: "A few rows back, Catilina watched Cicero with almost lascivious interest."
  • People have already made many jokes about Barack Obama being close with Hugo Chavez, after they cheerfully greeted each other despite bad relations. On The Daily Show, Jon Stewart mentioned that this was like fanfiction. Ooh boy.
  • The Benetton ad campaign titled “Unhate” took the Foe Yay subtext that lives among political figures and their international counterparts and took it to the next level. Warning. Not safe for sanity.
  • Joe Rogan once got into a fierce argument with fellow comedian Carlos Mencia about stealing joke material. During the argument, Carlos mocks him by saying that the reason he's so obsessed with him is that he's secretly in love with him.
  • The rivalry between Friedrich Hayek and John Maynard Keynes in economics.
  • Hamilton/Jefferson ftw! Powder wigs and knee-breeches and political and personal hatred - not to mention that they were arguable the two sexiest Founding Fathers (though in two very different ways)
    • Oh, but Hamilton/Jefferson has nothing on Adams/Jefferson. Best of friends turned into the worst of enemies due to politics, especially the election of 1800. There are historians dedicated to these two and their relationship. To top it all off, both of them died on the same day hours from one another. The day of the year? July 4, American Independence Day.
      • Don't forget that Adam's final words were "Thomas Jefferson still survi--". He was wrong; Jefferson had died earlier that day.
        • Jefferson and Adams have a touching ending, too. In their August years, not wanting to die without having explained themselves to each other, they struck up a correspondence that accumulated one hundred and fifty letters between them. Then, of course, died within hours of each other fifty years exactly after the Declaration was ratified by Congress.
  • The Duke of Wellington had a 14 foot tall nude statue of Napoleon in his entry hall. Really.
    • Because it was a free gift. The British Government bought it for him.
      • You still don't have to put it out on display.
      • You do if they gave it to you expecting you to hide it.
      • Actually, considering Napoleon wasn't the most attractive of military geniuses, You'd more have to consider it a testament to Wellington's sheer steel-plated will (and possibly, a testiment to his lack of gag reflex).
  • New Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott. They've been "flirting" with each other for years, but now that they'll (most likely) be fighting for the right to lead the country, things can only get... more interesting...
  • Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell during the New Labour years, and possibly since, too; Mandelson also with David Cameron's now Chancellor George Osborne more recently.
  • It's one thing to be outraged about an openly gay student body president at your alumnus, it's quite another to create a blog devoted to harassing and defaming said college student and his friends and family via Facebook screengrabs, calling him a gay Nazi elitist racist and "protesting" outside his house like a crazy teenager. And the grown man who's doing this cyber-bullying is an assistant attorney general who claims his actions are "political, not personal". He was eventually fired after it became clear to his boss that he was doing his cyber-bullying at work and not on his own time.
    • See here "How not to come out of the closet".
  • This actually happens with Hatedoms, too. There is a good reason that this trope is listed on the Hate Dumb page as an example of Hate Dumb, too! It's actually kind of...interesting how people seem to be talking about and/or keeping tabs on shows they claim to hate. It evidently seems like they're doing something right...since they're spreading word of mouth and are more than often encouraging people to see it to see how bad it is. (This often leads to Critical Backlash, too.)
    • Justin Bieber. Just look on twitter and with a straight face deny that the hatedom and Fan Haters aren't Foe Yay with them.
      • Heck, look at the comments in YouTube! It's safe to say that a good 95-100% of any music videos out there will have numerous comments trashing Justin Bieber or his fans, and any other video will have a 50-75% chance of having a comment like that.
      • Even if the video has nothing to do with music whatsoever, there is still a 40% probability someone will bring up the biebster as an example of something bad. Just Let It Go !
    • For a group of people who hate Twilight so much, it's kind of surprising how many of them go out to buy or read every single book or see every single movie based on the franchise. It's also amazing to see how many members of the hatedom constantly bring it up in conversation.
    • There are Christopher Nolan "haters" on the director's IMDb boards who post at least every hour, which suggests a different kind of obsession entirely.
    • Anime-style art as well as fan art on Deviant ART. Most of the truly mediocre stuff would be forgotten - if not for the fact that people just won't shut up about it.
    • If you look at the official boards for any MMORPG, you'll notice people who claim to have quit the game years ago or found something better yet still seem to be logging in again and again.
      • This actually happens a lot with other games; too. It's quite amazing to see how many people claim to have left the fandom yet still buy and play every single game that's come out ever since.
    • Wal-Mart has a Hatedom that keeps coming back again and again to buy stuff from them despite openly detesting it. Even when they have a choice.
      • This was lampshaded in Persona 4 with the Hatedom of Junes.
    • If you've ever worked customer service, not just Wal-Mart or its equivalents, you've seen these customers. You know them - the kind who say you lost them as a customer yet you see them come back again and again.
    • Politics. There is absolutely no need to describe anything involving that. AT ALL. And we mean it.
  • Muammar Gaddafi and Condoleezza Rice.
    • Although this was strictly one-sided. Rice thought is was hella creepy.
  • Bill Maher (liberal comedian) and Ann Coulter (conservative pundit) have a strangely mixed relationship. While obviously they argue a lot, being of very different ideologies (though still more similar on some subjects than you might expect) there are times when Bill Maher will defend Ann Coulter, like when she was an interview guest on his show, and he shouted at other interview guests for being so dismissive towards her.
  • Nicki Minaj & Lil' Kim anyone?
  • One of the more common views of Mixed Martial Arts and the associated sport of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, due to both the usual requirement of being lean and physically in shape, and the "ground game." From a fan perspective a standing clinch can look like "hugging," but things can look especially homoerotic once it hits the ground. Of course, from the perspectives of the fighters themselves, they're just trying to win using what techniques they know to work within the rules, i.e. wrapping one's legs around the opponent's waist (the "full guard"), as much as it may resemble the missionary position, is to mitigate damage and block attempts to "pass guard," while setting up sweeps of the opponent to end up on top, or to set up choke holds or joint locks from the bottom.
    • For an example of this view, a mostly work-safe write-up of UFC 83.
    • The weigh-ins. Dear God, the weigh-ins. Shirtless, standing nose-to-nose, both guys giving the most intense Death Glare they can muster? Oh, yeah.
  • Any sports the ancient Greeks ever practiced ever. Gymnopaedia, anyone?
  • Evan Lysacek and Johnny Weir, two rival American figure skaters, are infamous for retconning their relationship. In the past, they were obviously quite friendly with each other, but now they both claim that they either don't care about or actively dislike the other. Their most recent scuffle: Evan said that Johnny wasn't good enough to participate in a particular ice show, Johnny called him a slore during an interview, Evan claimed not to have watched that interview...and then it transpired that Evan's castmates on Dancing With The Stars had started calling him a slore.
    • Any Ho Yay implications were unfortunately destroyed when Lysacek Tweeted an incredibly offensive comment about Weir and then refused to apologize for several days.
    • Better theoretical response by Lysacek?

Commenter: "Is Weir really a man?"
Lysacek: "Oh, yes. Definitely. And what a man..."


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