What Is Queer Baiting?

Queer baiting was once chiefly used to refer to fictional characters and applied to films, TV shows and other media that led audiences on to believe someone was queer. Today it's increasingly being used to describe real people, mostly celebrities who look or act queer without explicitly saying or coming out. As with terms like gaslighting, love bombing and gatekeeping, queer baiting was a once useful phrase that has become so overused that it's nearly lost any kind of coherent meaning.