On October 2020, online news magazine Wired published a piece that suggested the Surprised Pikachu meme was a stealth marketing campaign. Surprised Pikachu and The Supposed Stealth Marketing Campaign She also attributed it to an error in Twitter’s algorithm. When asked about why it was suspended, she speculated that mass-reporting may have been the primary culprit, although she couldn’t guess why it would be mass reported.
#Surprised pika series#
The creator of the meme, Angela, heard about the bizarre series of Twitter suspensions. By March 18, Twitter no longer suspended users who posted the Pikachu meme. The report was confirmed by other users, saying that only posting the original blurred version of the meme causes on-site suspensions. On March 16, a Twitter user reported that tweeting the shocked Pikachu face would get users suspended for gore. For instance, a Game of Thrones post on the subreddit /r/freefolk gained 20,000 points.īy 2019, the Surprised Pikachu meme was so popular that it reached a point of suspension. The Pikachu meme format also appeared on other websites and subreddits.
Ten days later, a similar post using the Surprised Pikachu face was blurred to make a point about the prolonged effects of computer use on your eyesight. By October 14, a new post using the same format gained 3,900 points. On October 2, the meme was posted on a Facebook meme page and gained more than 3,000 reactions and likes and 4,000 shares. On September 30, Pikachu and his shocked face appeared on the reddit trend /r/MemeEconomy and gained 880 points. The Spread of the Surprised Pikachu MemeĪfter the Surprised Pikachu meme gained traction on Tumblr, the post began spreading to other websites in the following days. So, she posted it and the rest was history. Angela went through her files and decided the surprised Pikachu face would fit well. The original joke was about purposely bending an object that you knew would break if you bend it, yet still being shocked that it bent. Coincidentally, it was the only screenshot she kept.įast forward to 2018, she had a post saved in her Tumblr drafts that needed a reaction image to go along with it. Included in her group of photos was the Surprised Pikachu. So she started screen grabbing all the scenes where the beloved Pokémon was off-model so she could make a compilation post on Tumblr. In 2017, Angela was rewatching the original “Pokémon” anime and noticed that Pikachu “looked a bit…off” in most of his scenes.
In her online interview with Tumblr user popokko (whose real first name is Angela her last name was not included in the interview) said that her love for “Pokémon” gave birth to the Surprised Pikachu meme. A user named popokko posted the Pikachu meme face and gained more than 200,000 notes. The shocked Pikachu meme made its first appearance on Tumblr on September 26, 2018. The meme is a screenshot of a surprised-looking Pikachu from Season 1, Episode 10 “Bulbasaur and the Hidden Village.” Not everyone remembers why he’s shocked but the premise of the meme is simple - a person does something that has an obvious outcome, and then they express surprise at the results (that were bound to happen).
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