Pokemon Shaming

About

Pokemon Shaming, also shortened as Pokeshaming, is a series of illustrations featuring Pokemon characters holding up signs with confessions of their own humorous transgressions that are characteristic of their abilities, drawn in the style of dogshaming photographs

Origin

On June 16th, 2014, Tumblr user DavidMakesArt^[5] posted several illustrations of Pokemon characters looking ashamed and holding up their confessional messages with references related to their individual attack moves (shown below). In the first month, the post gained over 940 notes.

Precursor: Dogshaming

Dogshaming is a single topic blog launched in August 2012, featuring photographs of dogs with signs describing transgressions performed by the animal.

Spread

On July 11th, 2014, DeviantArtist^[3] sabretoothlioness uploaded an illustration of the Pokemon Espeon wearing a sign confessing to using the move “psychic” to place objects in the toilet (shown below, left). On July 12th, Tumblr user tamagoomy^[2] posted an illustration of the Pokemon Goomy holding a sign confessing to using the “rain dance” move inside a home (shown below, right). In the first week, the post gained over 175 notes.

On the following day, DeviantArtist^[1] sunsona uploaded an illustration titled “Pokeshaming,” featuring several different Pokemon holding signs confessing transgressions (shown below, left). On July 14th, Tumblr^[8] user barag0n submitted an illustration of the Pokemon Ditto holding a sign apologizing for morphing into its Pokemon trainer’s boyfriend (shown below, right). In the next 48 hours, the post garnered more than 5,400 notes.

Meanwhile, Redditor Pierre56 submitted a Pokemon shaming illustration of the character MewTwo confessing to murdering its creators to the /r/pokemon^[9] subreddit (shown below, left). On July 15th, Pierre56 submitted an illustration of the Helix Fossil confessing to starting “a cult” to /r/pokemon^[10] (shown below, right). In the coming days, the Internet news sites Kotaku,^[4] Dorkly^[6] and A.V. Club^[7] highlighted notable examples from the series.