Just days after launching their family-friendly, franchise-centric discussion forums, The Pokémon Company has temporarily shuttered the platform in order to allow their moderation team time to clean-up the flood of completely inappropriate posts made by a number of socially-stunted adult users.
As documented by several Twitter users, shortly upon their opening, Nintendo’s official Pokémon forums were inundated with posts attempting to raise wildly uncouth topics of discussion with the forum’s all-ages audience.
For example, per a screencap shared by @Nintendeal, while earnest discussions such as “What’s your favorite Pokémon?” or “Any Mystery Dungeon [series] fans here?” made up a majority of the forum’s early posts, these were quickly followed by a storm of wildly unsitable topics including “[Pokémon Legends: Arceus antagonist] Volo isn’t hot I’m sorry,” “reminder that there are tons of beautiful *adult* men and women in the franchise,” and “[Pokémon Scarlet and Violet antagonist] Penny is trans btw”.
In another screenshot shared by @Poketnexus, forum user MostRandomGamer can be seen asking “What human character is the fruitiest?” while ShadeHelianthus inquires “What Pokémon do you think did 9/11?”
As found by @OnTheDownLoTho, other users raised such sexually-charged conversations as “I think I’m in love with houndoom” and “Would you pursue a romantic relationship with a Ditto?”
“So how’s that Pokémon forum thingy going” sarcastically asked @TheMegaNitro_1, sharing two more topics which read “I am immeasurably attracted to [the grass-psychic Pokémon] Gardevoir” and, in a sexual manner, “Who is the most ticklish girl in Pokémon?”
However, it seems that Nintendo was not having any of these terminally online fans’ behavior, as they immediately responded to these posts by handing out ban after ban to offending users.
“Just got banned from the site because I said [Paladea Pokémon Champion] Nemona is a lesbian,” @Plush2nd announced. “So that’s fun.”
@hakkols revealed that they had received a ban for asserting both that male characters “[Paladea Elite Four member] Hassel and [Artazon Gym Leader] Brassus are married” and that “[Alfornada Gym Leader] Tulip, [Academy Battle Studies teacher] Dendra, and [Scarlet and Violet Academy nurse] Miriam are in a poly relationship”.
Sharing their own ban receipt, @B0N3S_R0SES recalled, “I said I have a crush on [Battle Tower’s Salon Maiden] Anabel and I’m a lesbian and to me she’s a butch lesbian icon and guess what”.
As of this writing, TCPI has reactivated the forums, though all comments and discussions are now required to undergo a pre-approval process while groups are still currently disabled.