Bait bus

A gay porn site and its scenario: a straight guy is lured into a van with the promise of a woman, and a man takes her place. Staged, but famous.

Bait Bus is the name of a gay porn site, and by extension of the most famous straight bait scenario: a van picks up a supposedly straight guy with the promise of sex with a woman and money, and at the decisive moment the woman is swapped for a man. Among gay men the name has become shorthand for the whole idea, and "a bait bus situation" means any setup where a straight guy ends up somewhere he swore he would never be.

It is a staged fantasy. The performers are paid, the "surprise" is scripted, and the outrage on the straight guy's face is part of the job.

How it works

The formula is simple and has barely changed. The van cruises the streets, a guy is invited in, a woman flirts with him and the cameraman offers cash for a video. Then he is blindfolded and told she will suck him off; when the blindfold comes off, it is a man. He protests, the price goes up, and the scene goes on.

Writing in 2018, Out magazine observed that it seems most of the videos are scripted and nobody is really duped. That has never stopped the fans: the pleasure of the format is in pretending.

Why it became a meme

Bait Bus survived in gay culture well beyond the people who actually watched it. The van, the blindfold and the switch became a running joke: a friend who brings a straight colleague to a gay bar is "driving the bait bus", and any story of a straight guy who "just happened" to end up in bed with a man gets the same nickname.

The joke works because the fantasy it mocks is real. A lot of gay porn is built around straight men who don't usually do this, from gay for pay models to casting scenes to the frat genre, and Bait Bus was simply the most shameless version.

The criticism

Bait Bus gets the same criticism as straight bait in general, only louder: it turns consent into a punchline and makes gay sex the trick played on a straight man. Its defenders answer that it is a game everybody on screen agreed to. Off screen, actually tricking someone into sex is not a fantasy but a crime.

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