We can now look back on November 28, 2025, as the start of a mass-psychosis event. In an era of neo-puritanical television slop, a fresh, horny breeze swept in from Canada: Heated Rivalry, a six-episode series about two professional hockey rivals turned lovers, Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov, stirred something deep in the American psyche. Ordinary taxpaying adult women, many of them my friends, suddenly lost control of their faculties over “the gay hockey show.” “Dude, I have the sickness,” wrote one. “I don’t like men,” said another. “I don’t understand why I’m so drawn to them.” The most common reaction to watching it for the first time was either to watch it again or to go to the source material: a six-book series by Rachel Reid called Game Changers. The memetic experience was re-created online through fan edits, reaction videos, and scenes restaged in Animal Crossing. Every day brought a new, heightened level of fervor at dance parties, look-alike contests, and spin classes. People were learning Russian because Ilya speaks Russian. “I put myself fully offline for the month of December and missed the entire life cycle of Heated Rivalry airing in real time,” says Casey McQuiston, the author of the gay romance Red, White & Royal Blue. “I came back and was like, What the fuck is going on? What’s happening to the American audience is truly ‘If you give a Victorian child a Doritos Locos Taco.’”
The sight of Shane and Ilya kissing had awakened a libidinal desire in many women, both heterosexual and queer, like an army of sleeper-cell agents hungry for more. “I can’t actually figure out what’s happening to me,” says Arielle Angel, the editor of Jewish Currents. “I’m just having a midlife crisis where I’m like, I’m never going to feel these feelings again.”
I found their madness as intriguing as they did. Why gay men?
