What is Butt Buddy?

Definition

Butt buddy (also spelled butt-buddy or buttbuddy) is a slang term with a complex and contested history. In its most common usage, particularly in American English from the 1980s through the 2000s, it referred to two people who were extremely close friends—often with an implication that their friendship was so intense it bordered on romantic or sexual. The “butt” in the phrase was a crude metonymy for intimacy: these were friends who were close enough to see each other’s butts, or who spent so much time together they might as well be joined at the hip (or lower). The term was almost always used by men to describe male friendships, and it carried a homophobic undertone: it suggested that close male friendship was inherently suspicious, ridiculous, or secretly homosexual. In this usage, “butt buddy” was an insult masquerading as a joke, a way to police male intimacy by mocking it. However, the term also had a more neutral or even affectionate usage in some contexts, where it simply meant “best friend” or “inseparable companion,” without the homophobic edge. In recent years, the term has declined significantly in usage, replaced by “bestie,” “BFF,” “ride or die,” and other friendship terms that do not carry the same baggage.

Why It Matters

Butt buddy matters because it is a case study in how language encodes anxiety about masculinity and intimacy. The term emerged in a culture where male friendship was simultaneously celebrated and suspect: men were expected to have close friends, but not too close. The butt buddy was the friend who called too often, who showed up unannounced, who knew too much. The joke was that their friendship was so intense it must be romantic; the underlying fear was that male intimacy of any depth was inherently queer. This anxiety is not unique to the term—it appears in the “no homo” culture of the 2000s, in the ongoing discomfort with male physical affection, and in the way men often describe their closest friends as “like a brother” rather than simply “my friend.” Butt buddy matters, too, because it reveals how language changes with culture. As attitudes toward homosexuality have shifted and as male friendship has become more openly discussed, the term has become less common and more dated. What was once a cutting playground insult now feels like a relic of a less accepting era.

Example

> The two men had been friends since freshman year of college. They had roomed together, dated sisters (briefly, disastrously), and started a business that had failed and then succeeded. They called each other on their birthdays, on their anniversaries, and on random Tuesdays when one of them needed to complain about their spouse. In 1998, their coworkers called them “butt buddies.” It was meant as a joke. It was also meant as a warning: you are too close, you are too visible, you are making people uncomfortable. The two men laughed it off. They did not stop calling each other. They did not stop being friends. But one of them thought about the term for years afterward. He wondered if there was something wrong with being that close to another man. He wondered if the joke was actually an accusation. He wondered if his friend wondered the same thing. In 2023, they were still friends. They still called each other on random Tuesdays. They did not use the term “butt buddy.” It had died in the water between them, a relic of a time when their friendship needed defending rather than simply being.

Internet Angle

On the internet, “butt buddy” appears in several contexts, most of them retrospective or analytical. In discussions about 1990s and 2000s slang, the term is regularly cited as an example of how casual homophobia was embedded in everyday language. On Reddit, threads about “words you used in high school that you wouldn’t use now” frequently feature “butt buddy” as a top comment. The term also appears in discussions about male friendship and emotional intimacy, where it is analyzed as a barrier that men have historically faced in forming close platonic bonds. In meme culture, “butt buddy” is sometimes used ironically or self-deprecatingly by men who are close friends, reclaiming the term as a joke about their own intimacy—though this reclamation is not universal and is often generational. On Twitter, the term occasionally resurfaces in political discourse, where it is used to criticize close alliances between politicians or public figures (e.g., “Those two are butt buddies”). This usage retains the original sense of “suspiciously close” but has largely lost the specifically homophobic connotation. Among younger internet users, the term is almost unknown; they are far more likely to use “bestie,” “twin,” or “main character” to describe close friendships. YouTube videos about 1990s slang and cultural analysis of male friendship often discuss “butt buddy” as a historical artifact. In LGBTQ+ online spaces, the term is sometimes discussed as an example of the microaggressions that shaped earlier generations’ understanding of same-sex intimacy.

Related Terms

Bestie — The modern, gender-neutral, unambiguously positive term for a close friend
BFF — “Best friends forever”; the millennial version of bestie, now slightly dated itself
No homo — The defensive phrase that butt buddy culture exemplified; used to distance male affection from homosexuality
Bromance — The more recent, less pejorative term for an intense male friendship
Ride or die — The modern equivalent that emphasizes loyalty rather than intimacy
Homosocial — The sociological term for same-sex social bonds, which butt buddy culture both acknowledged and policed
Toxic masculinity — The broader cultural framework that made “butt buddy” an insult rather than a compliment
Simp — The modern internet insult that has partially replaced butt buddy in function, though with different targets