The Portland Pickles, a collegiate summer baseball team from the West Coast League, have done plenty of unusual things on social media to get people talking about them before, but they took that to a new level Wednesday. There, they said that mascot Dillon (a giant pickle, seen above) would be taking over their account and the next tweet would be from him, then sent out a tweet that certainly looked, uh, suggestive (and drew endless quote-tweets and responses), and then said they’d be ending their mascot takeover. Here’s how that played out:
MASCOT TWITTER TAKEOVER! Our mascot, Dillon, will be taking over our Twitter account NOW! Our next tweet will be him. Feel free to ask any questions or just show your support! pic.twitter.com/TC2VnGeMto
— Portland Pickles (@picklesbaseball) January 12, 2022
new phone who dis pic.twitter.com/57JBM6oQbL
— Portland Pickles (@picklesbaseball) January 12, 2022
We have ended our mascot takeover. It’s come to our attention that this photo can be misinterpreted as a disturbing image. Dillon would like to go on record and say that he was trying to give his fans a thumbs up. https://t.co/5VUgkhieq2
— Portland Pickles (@picklesbaseball) January 12, 2022
This naturally drew a lot of attention, and a lot of people ribbing the Pickles for sending out a tweet “that can be misinterpreted.” But it certainly seems like this may have been the plan all along, especially given the team’s heavy history of social media memes (their Twitter bio is even “we play baseball from June to August and make memes the rest of the time. kosher mostly”). Also adding to that case is the 10 accounts they specifically tagged in that tweet, from male grooming brand Manscaped to California state senator Scott Wiener to a number of brands also known for Twitter shenanigans (including hot dog company Oscar Mayer).
And the Pickles’ comment on an Uproxx writeup of this that took it as a face-value misstep also maybe supports that this was intentional:
ALWAYS double check before posting 💯😤 pic.twitter.com/2mXVuohdk7
— Portland Pickles (@picklesbaseball) January 12, 2022
At any rate, regardless of this was an intentionally-executed stunt or an actual non-realization of how this image would be interpreted, it certainly led to a lot of Twitter attention for the Pickles. And if this was intentional, the quick “It has come to our attention” is a smart and funny cover; if anyone was actually really bothered by this, the team can point to that and say “Look, we said we goofed!” So kudos to them for figuring out how to get the attention of much of Twitter for a while, whether that was intentional or not.
[Portland Pickles on Twitter]
