Straight Up

Sean Foo, the founder of LGBTQ+ online media platform Dear Straight People, gets real about the importance of storytelling, and producing Singapore's first gay web drama

- Ethan Kan

When Sean Foo came out at age 23 to a few of his straight friends, the experience of being “bombarded with questions” helped launch Dear Straight People, which today is one of the most popular LGBTQ+ online media platforms in Asia. “I was the first openly gay friend for many of them,” says Foo. “I realised just how rife the misconceptions were about the queer community. It struck me that a gap exists between the straight and queer communities because queer publications were only talking to queer audiences.”

For a passion project created in 2015 during Foo’s final year of his communications degree in Australia’s Monash University, Dear Straight People—its name a bold declaration and direct confrontation all at once—has since built an impressive following in countries in regions as close to home as Southeast Asia and those as far‑flung as the US. Having written and published touching, heartbreaking and uplifting stories about the queer community in Singapore and Asia, Foo has also collaborated with leading groups such as LGBTQ+ counselling centre Oogachaga and sex workers’ rights group Project X to raise funds for their respective missions. Nowadays, Foo, who runs

Dear Straight People full‑time mostly on his own, also publishes some of these stories exclusively on content subscription platform Patreon, where more scintillating features such as gay‑for‑pay massage therapists and a sneak peak into the lives of Taiwan’s most popular gay OnlyFans couple are hidden behind a paywall.