Wendy's Unknowingly Posts White Supremacist Meme On Twitter
Wendy's was on top of its social media game last week when it began tweeting out hilarious, trolling responses to fan questions and burning their critics with "clapbacks" that have gone viral.
@TheRatedHDGamer So you're saying our jokes are fresh and delicious. Thanks.
— Wendy's (@Wendys) January 9, 2017
@BOGDANmvm Our shoes are building foundations because we're a restaurant.
— Wendy's (@Wendys) January 8, 2017
But it's all fun and games until someone accidentally tweets out a meme that's known to be the "mascot" of the white supremacist movement.
Wendy's just tweeted and deleted this pic.twitter.com/c7l1nzOKZr
— Colin Jones (@colinjones) January 4, 2017
The Pepe the Frog meme was originally distributed on Tumblr as a harmless cartoon frog that usually was seen with the phrase "Feels good man." Since last year, though, the frog meme has been co-opted by the alt-right, white supremacists, and anti-Semites. So when Wendy's tweeted out the meme, there was outrage and it promptly was deleted:
"Our community manager was unaware of the recent political connotations associated with Pepe memes, and it has since been removed," Wendy's social-media manager Amy Brown told Business Insider. "Since this used to be purely an innocuous meme, he had this fan content saved from a year or two ago."
Now, some Trump supporters, who thought Wendy's was making a "white power" political statement, are calling for a boycott since the chain backtracked and apologized. Some users who supported and retweeted the offensive meme have allegedly been blocked by the Wendy's Twitter account.
@Wendys Yo Wendy why you hating on Trump? Do we need to boycott? pic.twitter.com/LpqTrYKWLh
— Hanz Guvenschmitz (@HanzGuvenschmit) January 7, 2017
Wendy's has never made a political endorsement via Twitter.