is the term "yaoi" back again? I thought It got outdated and replaced with BL. but I see p...

Yaoi never left. Bl is more soft whereas yaoi shows the sex

I still use yaoi it's safer word to talk with my friend in public lol also to refer characters as seme and uke.

BL is too broad term. Among fujo/fudan or BL enjoyers, yaoi and shounen ai are used to distinguish the contents

BL is a general term for the relationship between 2 males. The story is usually suitable for general audience.

Yaoi on the other hand is used to imply that there is some kind of sexual acts going on, which makes it more suitable for the mature audiences.

I think there was a little decrease in using yaoi when fujoshi discourse became a big thing? It seems like it's kind of a meme now even among people who didn't use it before. I've seen a couple people use yaoi to refer to sfw manga even which is... weird.

Anyway the English versions of the Japanese terms tend to get a little bit mixed. Japanese bookstores will broadly place any manga published in bl magazines in the bl section- sfw and nsfw are not separated. Not all manga with mlm relationships will be there though. For instance My Love Mix-Up! is published in a shoujo magazine so it will be with the shoujo manga even though it's considered bl here. Still bl colloquially but English speaking fandoms tend to conflate demographic tags with genre.

Yaoi is also a LOT more specific of a term and refers to the sort of plotless porn that will get labeled as mrm escapee here rather than referring to any bl with nsfw content. And uh. Keep in mind if you're ever discussing bl in a Japanese community that shounen-ai is NOT generally used to refer to sfw bl but instead shotacon content;;

Sorry this ended up a ramble! I just think difference behaviors/conceptions between language in different fandoms is neat.

this was really informative thank you!! I surprised at the shonen ai one since it's one of my favs lol

No problem! I don't know enough about the history to say if that was always the case or not. Since it's just the direct translation of boy's love it could be that it got that connotation later. I've never heard it used that way in a western fandom space though so I wouldn't worry about it too much.