It has come to light that the original logo in 2004 was a Koffing with a Swastika instead of the normal crossbones thing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPG6vIN8Kx8
Video by cecilily - We need to talk about the Nazi past of Smogon
This is so outrageous it seems fake, but they adressed it last year and decided not to change the name which is peak 
Smogon deez nuts
Every G*mer a nazi, I guess
ya know, in comparison, this site ain’t so bad
the bar is in hell
i’ll take the occasional struggle session over actual fucking nazis any day
Smogon council be like
Good video, worth a watch if are invested in the community. At the end she argues that the site has changed, and cites the presence of a diverse community as evidence of that. Personally I am not going to use the site anymore because I am concerned about the ideology of the hosts and admins. If Smogon was and potentially still is a safe harbor for antisemitic behavior it will never be a safe space for any minority group. The logo is still a koffing, they just got rid of the swastika.
Pokémon Go to the Re-education Camps
Yoooo what the fuck
Jesus Christ the original site
is Bulbapedia bad too or is that okay
every once in awhile I wanna browse that just looking at random pokemon I don’t know
Not sure but please don’t tell me if serebii.net is cursed i don’t think i could take it rn
I know people who are friends with the guy who runs it and he’s cool from everything I’ve heard
Good stuff that’s a relief
WHAT
You’re telling me the people who started something because they were elitist gamers who wanted to reduce something fun and artistic entirely to a cold, soulless numbers game were also disgusting fascist pigs?
Thank goodness something like that would never happen anywhere else, especially not at my favorite video game company, Blizzard Entertainment, Inc.!
wanted to reduce something fun and artistic entirely to a cold, soulless numbers game
As an autistic person who enjoys numbers games this feels kinda ableist tbh. People find joy in different things, you’re not better for disliking numbers.
You could be right! I’ve just come across a lot lot lot lot lot lot lot lot lot of people who sure did think they were better than everyone else for liking vidya game numbers more than others. And you only need to spend about 90 seconds with any group of WoW players who treats that game that way to uncover a social environment as disgustingly bigoted as anything you’d find on 4chan. And those guys sure didn’t hesitate to utilize slurs of all varieties when putting down anyone and everyone who dared to care even a little bit about anything other than what the 3rd party website that ranked them said about how big their numbies were, at every available opportunity.
“Hardcore” Pokemon players could be different, I dunno. And I’m certain it’s not a 1-to-1
Good thing we have you to tell those elitists the proper way to have fun
i don’t think taking the children’s RPG too seriously is nazi behavior
It’s clearly changed since then with how strong of a queer presence is on that site. The video shows to me that Smogon is an example of something that started out as an edgelord hub actually doing something and changing for the better.
There’s a lot of Nazis in queer spaces, not really an argument
Flashbacks to last year at SF Castro Street Fair where a guy was wearing a jersey with 88 as the number, and SS lightning bolts all over like a sponsor logo
Okay fine but even then it’s nowhere near the edgelord cesspool it once was.
Letting Kingambit stay in OU is worse imo
I think, at a bare minimum they should change the name and logo, but maybe I’m a lib for that as it would probably just be performative, just seems indefensible to me to keep it
Yeah that sounds reasonable to me. There’s of course going to be heavy backlash from people who have grown attached to it but enough people will get over it.
Because it is peak white liberal performative nonsense to change the name. It’s exactly what every white city dwelling liberal does when they find out something has a dark past, they change the offensive part (or do an overreaction, an example could be made for the prime directive in star trek) then pretend everything is still all hunky dory while doing effectively nothing material.
Maybe I’ve just had too many encounters with liberals who just never really cared at all to begin with to say that.
Yeah, the video mentions that multiple people are still around in leadership positions that were there during the time where that was a thing so you would probably hope to see some accountability from those individuals, In theory you could do that without changing the name and logo, but I feel like a lot of people will never look at it the same way after learning where it came from.
What happened more than likely is one of two things, early internet edginess, or the person paying for the site at the start did the thing that a lot of forum owners did back then “it’s my forum, and I can do what I want with it”.
I can’t find the energy to get worked up over this in either case, mostly because there’s bigger fish to fry in the grand scheme of things, and both cases were pretty common in early internet especially the latter which is where the unofficial rule 0 of forum posting comes from, don’t piss off the guy paying for it.
WHY MUST EVERYTHING I LOVE SUCK?
I have 1000s of matches on Pokemon showdown and have been lurking Smogon for years. What the fuck.
Disappointed but nut surprised
TIL, and I really didn’t like pokemon to begin with.
Digimon and Medabots fans stay winning
Digimon
Yeah I support our troops, V-Pet troops.
I’m shocked at this, YouTube doesn’t have a clip of the season 2 characters entering the digital world that was in every episode.
MEDABOO-O-O-O-O-O-TS
SICK DNB
“go getcha friends”
ITS TIME TO BATTLE
ROBATTLE
TO THE TOP!
VGC fans stay winning
