In an attempt to drown out videos, pictures and information about the protests, people mocked Proud Boys by using their name literally and reclaiming it as a sense of gay pride. They sarcastically wrote in their support for the march by sharing GIFs and pictures that appear to show support for the LGBTQ+ community.
People also added the #MillionMAGAMarch or variations of the hashtag to also flood the general protest’s Twitter feed.
Members of the LGBTQ+ community have shared images of gay couples with the Proud Boys hashtag since October, according to the BBC. Star Trek actor George Takei seemed to have kicked off the trend by calling on young people via Twitter and TikTok to action.
“What if gay guys took pictures of themselves making out with each other or doing very gay things, then tagged themselves with #ProudBoys. I bet it would mess them up real bad,” he wrote.
There’s also a Twitter account with the handle @ProudBoysUS that seeks to reclaim the term as an LGBTQ+ inclusive term. According to Twitter, the account joined in August 2018 and has over 44,000 followers.
“The Proud Boys are a queer, pan-gender, multi-cultural organization who will not apologize for our space in the modern world,” the account’s bio says.
Sharing cat pictures with #ProudBoys was another popular meme.
Besides cats and gay men, pancakes were the other popular meme to try to disrupt the Proud Boys’ protests on Twitter. Some people also shared crossovers with the gay pride posts by sharing stacks of pancakes that were colored to look like the LGBT pride flag.
Other people also used the pancake meme to amplify President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. One person shared a photo of Biden in what appears to be a diner with a plate of flapjacks in front of him. Another person shared a tasty-looking plate of “blueberry pancakes to celebrate blue states.”
As previously reported, the “Million MAGA March” was scheduled to begin at Washington, D.C.’s Freedom Plaza at noon. The protests are part of rallies like “Stop the Steal” in which President Donald Trump’s supporters have protested against unverified claims that the election was “stolen” from Trump.
While many people tried to drown out the Proud Boys’ posts, other people mocked them by sharing videos of the group chanting “f**k Antifa.” Many remarked how Antifa is simply a shorthand for “Anti-Fascism” therefore implying that the Proud Boys must be pro-fascism. Other people made fun of them by taking the chant literally, responding as if the Proud Boys wanted to have sexual relations with Antifa.
