Westboro Baptist Church Responds to Pokémon Go Troll With Will Smith & Jigglypuff

Yes, the Westboro Baptist Church is a gym in Pokémon Go, and yes, they’re now well aware of this fact. After an image showed up on the internet of a Clefairy stationed at that gym named LoveIsLove, the Westboro Baptist Church responded the only way they really know how: with ridiculously out of touch tweets, memes, vines, and images.

For those of you unaware of how a Pokémon Go Pokémon gym works, here’s how it goes: trainers can physically visit real-world locations that are designated as gyms. Usually these “gyms” are actually landmarks, historical sites, major company headquarters, or in the case of the WBC, churches. When they arrive, they can pit their own Pokémon against those that were stationed there by players who came before. At the top of the “chain” (just like in the traditional games) is a gym leader, typically the person with the strongest Pokémon.

Now, in the cast of the WBC gym, a trainer named Pinknose stationed their Clefairy—a pink, puffy, loveable smoosh of a Pokémon—named LoveIsLove as the gym’s “protector” in a way.

Seeing that, the WBC responded with a bunch of weird (and not in a good way) tweets and memes that include:

• A really freaking strange use of Will Smith’s “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It” and a Jigglypuff:

• Another Jigglypuff singing “Repent or perish,” the WBC’s catchphrase—or, if the WBC were a Pokémon, its name.

The WBC Twitter account is full of more hateful strangeness, but it’s also full of terrible slurs and other awful things, so maybe you can go ahead and skip it. All that being said, Nintendo can’t possibly be happy with seeing their characters alongside messages like “Repent or perish,” right? Hmm.

As far as I can tell, the LoveIsLove Clefairy is still in place atop the church, so there you go, friends. Love’s still winning, despite all the hateful things these people churn out.

(via Kotaku)

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Jessica Lachenal

Jessica Lachenal is a writer who doesn’t talk about herself a lot, so she isn’t quite sure how biographical info panels should work. But here we go anyway. She's the Weekend Editor for The Mary Sue, a Contributing Writer for The Bold Italic (thebolditalic.com), and a Staff Writer for Spinning Platters (spinningplatters.com). She's also been featured in Model View Culture and Frontiers LA magazine, and on Autostraddle. She hopes this has been as awkward for you as it has been for her.

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