The one year anniversary for Pokémon Masters was celebrated with an unintentionally dirty hashtag to commemorate the renaming of the game, but it doesn’t mean what players think it does. The Pokémon battle simulator was renamed Pokémon Masters EX, but – when put in hashtag format – the game’s title looks a little more lude than expected. As a result, #pokemonmastersex is trending on Twitter at the time of writing, but not for the developer’s intended reason.
Pokémon Masters was released for iOS and Android devices on August 28, 2019. The game focuses on using Pokémon to battle trainers from the anime as well as the main series of games. To celebrate the game’s first anniversary, Pokémon Masters released a huge update renaming the game to Pokémon Masters EX and kicking off a series on in-game events. The official Pokémon Masters Twitter account had been hyping up the event using the #PokemonMastersEX hashtag for almost a week before the internet caught wind of the rather nefarious hashtag.
Today, the hashtag had made its way to Twitter’s trending tab with #pokemonmastersex adorning itself to the right side of many users’ feed, complete with an adorable sprite of Red to make it all the more official and confusing. While the hashtag was originally intended to celebrate Pokémon Masters‘ first year anniversary, Twitter users took advantage of the opportunity to post their favorite crude Pokémon memes. Various memes used popular formats comparing the two hashtags while others took jabs at legitimate Pokémon content that could be misconstrued as sexual. Some of the best tweets using the hashtag can be found below:
In Twitter’s defense, Pokémon has produced some fairly promiscuous content over the years. It’s hard to forget the banned episode of Pokémon that featured blue-haired antagonist James donning a set of inflatable breasts in order to beat Misty in a bikini contest. So, while this was in all likelihood an honest mistake on Pokémon Masters‘ part, there is plenty of previous double entendres and suggestive additions that have fans’ minds deep in the gutter. Regardless of the true intent of the hashtag, Twitter has had a hay day with #pokemonmastersex. However, it’s hard to imagine that the hashtag wasn’t fabricated when the first one-year anniversary gift announced was a miserly stamina bonus.
This is likely the most Pokémon Masters will ever be talked about, so The Pokémon Company should note this as a major win on its part. Thousands of people are tweeting this unintentionally vulgar hashtag and bringing attention to Pokémon Masters. There are already plenty of Twitter users asking where #pokemonmastersex even came from, and other users have been quick to explain the one-year anniversary of the mobile game. Sure, this is definitely not the light Pokémon Masters EX wanted to be cast in, but all publicity is good publicity and #pokemonastersex is really good publicity.
Pokémon Masters EX is available now on iOS and Android.
Sources: Pokémon Masters EX, FiendRiver, stogbulb, LunarLivH, Mistah_J__