‘priDEMONth’ is the first meme of Pride Month 2023

Conservative Twitter is not exactly known for its artistic prowess, but last week a former GOP senatorial candidate posted a truly dynamite piece of graphic design. Its ensuing popularity with queer Twitter users was, however, entirely accidental.

Far-right conspiracy theorist, QAnon advocate, and outspoken homophobe Lauren Witzke tweeted what she intended to be an anti-LGBTQ graphic on May 26, highlighting the middle five letters of "Pride Month" to reveal the word "demon."

Despite the much-bemoaned problem of people publicly dunking on politically objectionable content and thus promoting it to a wider audience, this graphic proved too tempting to resist. Witzke had unintentionally shared a piece of genuinely cool Pride-related art—and it turns out the original image was actually created by a trans artist who is selling priDEMONth merch on Redbubble.

So while Witzke was trying to use this Twitter thread to raise money for her "lawsuit to defend free speech against the LGBTQ Mafia," most of the responses are from queer people drawing Pride Demon fanart, promoting the original artist, and generally making fun of Witzke.

The priDEMONth memes quickly made their way into fandom spaces, first with people posting their favorite queer demon characters, and then with a spinoff meme highlighting the fact that Pride Month also includes the word "emo." So is your fav a priDEMONth, or a pridEMOnth kind of character? Or both?

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