bit of a random question but I am really confused.
I have a friend who knows nothing about musical theatre. Nothing. A few weeks ago when I mentioned I was going to see Cats, she asked what that was. So I'm always explaining things to her. Anyway, I was telling her about Avenue Q, and listing some of my favorite songs; Everyone's a Little Bit Racist, and If You Were Gay. As soon as I said that, she said "Oh, I know that song!" and started to sing it. I was flabbergasted. I asked her how she knew it and she said something like, "Everyone knows it". But that was coming from a girl who has never heard of Cats, or Les Miserables, or anything else theatre related.
Then three days later, I was talking to another person who also didn't know much about MT and has only seen Wicked. As soon as I brought up Avenue Q (because we were discussing Book of Mormon and the two shows have a similar sense of humor) she started to sing "If You Were Gay".
WTF??? Was it, i don't know, a viral video or something? I'm very suprised. Especially since neither girl knew anything else about the show, or anything else about musical theatre, or where exactly they had heard the song. It was weird. Any thoughts? I mean, there are plenty of other songs that are way more famous, to my knowledge. Sorry for the long post.

Mh, the one Avenue Q song that pretty much everyone knows without knowing where it's from, is "The Internet is For Porn", which is because of an old video that indeed went viral. Now I'm not sure if the same kind of thing happened to any of the other songs.
"If You Were Gay" has probably been used a couple of times in silly fanvideos people make for tv shows or movies as well - though I'm not sure if those kind of things are so mainstream that people would really know the song well. Still, most of the Ave Q songs don't actually need a lot of context to be funny, so it's not entirely surprising some people would know them outside of the show.

Yeah, I've seen it on a few Youtube parody videos.

It is pretty well-covered on Youtube - pops up every so often in a parody etc.

I found it in about third grade or so through fan videos and AMVS. It's pretty frequently used. I then in about fifth grade or so was at a theatre camp and a couple girls ushered me over and said I had to hear this song they were listening to. It turned out the be The Internet is for Porn. I didn't even know they were from a musical yet. Later in sixth grade a girl mentioned to me some of the songs from it and I recognized them as Avenue Q songs.
They're pretty convenient as wacky, explicit songs.

When i see your topic, i am very curious about what "if you were gay" is so i find it on youtube. After i Listen to it, i think that it's really amazing and sounds great