It stems from an old proverb: “there is naught so queer as folk”, essentially meaning “people are strange”. The meaning of “queer” has shifted and narrowed over time to refer to sexuality, but kept its ties to this idiom, resulting in the TV show “queer as folk” and the generic phrase “queer folk”.

There is nothing especially pretentious or mythical about the word. It may just be your own assumptions/interpretations of it. Far more people have an issue with the word “queer” than they do “folk”. If you don’t like it, don’t use it, but you should also aim to shake the stigma from it, as it’s not what 99.9% of people mean when they use it.

“Folk” is pretentious in your mind? I would think the opposite were more true. Having “folksy charm” means you’re more grounded and personable when describing someone you find to be outside the norm.

“Folk” seems to denote a culture more, while “people” seems to denote you’re just pointing and saying “them people”.

Folk just means people, in fact it’s less pretentious because it’s the commoner english word for people, from English’s germanic roots (see the german word Volk)

Queer folk are your community members where queer people are a demographic of the population.

In my case queer folk and trans folk and LGBT+ folk come from a tip from Santa training, where you talk about a kid’s folks instead of parents, so as to not raise issues when kids don’t have them but guardians instead.

Queer folk are the people among my crew and homies and mates who identify as queer or queer-adjacient.

There is actually a mostly unrelated phrase from the north of England; “Nowt queer as folk.” Meaning ‘People can be strange in their behaviour’.

This may or may not have fed into ‘Queer Folk’. But it certainly was the source of a UK TV drama series called ‘Queer as Folk’ in the 90s.

Folk is pretentious? It literally means common people, the opposite of pretentiousness. I am thinking that you don’t have much familiarity with the word nor the people that use it. It does not carry the meaning that you seem to think it does.

You are likely hearing /seeing it being used by people raised in an area where that is common vernacular to casually identify a group of people that share a culture.

I think in more recent times it has to do with using folks as an easy gender neutral address instead of saying you guys etc, and then it spread out everywhere because it is, well, easier and people don’t want to think too much.

“folk” does not refer to mythical creatures

Folk is a gender neutral alternative to guys/girls etc. It’s used where you might use a term like that, not where you’d use “people”

So folk songs are fairy songs?

I have mostly positive vibes with “folk”, like folk music, folk art, common folk, etc. But I understand where you are coming from with this. It kind of smacks of “other” in this particular context.

The prose sounds better. Fewer syllables.

why do people care so much about the use of one word over another?

I just want to say I get where you’re coming from. It sounds similar to the way people say “fairy folk” which I assume is why you mention mythical creatures. I guess a lot of people in this thread are less familiar with that usage.