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Fans Use Pokemon GO to Troll Westboro Baptist Church, Westboro Launches Hate Campaign in Response


Westboro Baptist Church and Pokemon GO have come into conflict in the strangest ways. In Pokemon GO, several locations are marked as Pokemon gyms, which players can claim and protect with a Pokemon of their choice. One of those gyms happened to be located at Westboro Baptist Church, a group who is infamous for being intolerant, especially of LGBT people. They have gone as far as to picket the funerals of LGBT individuals and have protested things like Comic-Con. Therefore, in a clever bit of trolling, a user claimed Westboro's Pokemon gym with a Clefairy called "Loveislove", based on a slogan of the LGBT community Westboro Baptist despises.

It's unknown if the Clefairy is still in charge of the gym, but the act definitely hit a nerve with Westboro Baptist, who launched a twitter hate campaign in response. Thus, we see Clefairy posted on a sign that says "Repent or Perish". What a time to be alive.

In addition to this tweet, Westboro Baptist has gone so far as to call Clefairy, a fictional digital creature, a "s*d*mite" and decided Jigglypuff should be the one to lecture Clefairy on its super-gay ways. And here I always thought Jigglypuff was down with tolerance! Say it ain't so!

All joking aside, I'd exercise caution when looking at Westboro Baptist's twitter, as they have Pikachu toting signs with slurs against gay people and so on. It's the typical kind of thing you'd expect from the group. Westboro seems to think Pokemon itself is sinful despite using them as mascots, which especially ironic because churches are common locations for gyms and Pokestops, so Pokemon GO is actually making people enter houses of worship.

I personally salute the brave Clefairy that started this weirdness and I hope it or Pokemon like it will remain to annoy Westboro Baptist well into the future. What about you? What do you think of all this Pokemon GO related controversy?

Read: Niantic Labs Lists Pokemon Go Bugs and Promises They're Working On It

Read: Pokemon GO is About To Surpass Twitter in Terms of Daily Active Users

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