195

There actually was context for this believe it or not. Before the Great Reddit Enshitification, r/dankmemes (I think), would have a yearly election to determine what the fish of the year would be. I think they also even held regularly scheduled debates. It was in an elimination bracket system like they do in basketball.

I don't remember if the pike ended up getting cancelled or not.

Super racist. Worse than white nationalists.

Northern Pike is an abusive ableist (and transphobic) asshole, especially if you have any kind of mental or neurodevelopmental disorder, all while caling you a sanist and/or ableist.

In his mind, every mental/neurodevelopmental disorder bipolar and/or borderline disorder, and people just should take their meds, with no complaints about any side effect (which is "real ableism" according to him).

The whole falloff of him started with him posting a Google doc of a former coworker of his, accusing said former coworker of "appropriating autism", "glorifying self-harm" (said "self-harm" was just stimming), and that said coworker actually had a serious bipolar disorder.

The half of the internet cancels the coworker, the other half decided to look into Pike's history. They not only quickly found the archives of the "self-harm" posts (all of which were non-harmful stims, while Pike left out the images to "not promote self-harm"), but a whole pattern of dismissing autistic and other similar people's sensory distress as either mood swings or "done solely for attention". They eventually found a way worse case, where Pike successfully convinced an autistic woman to fully mask her autism and then just take a ton of mood stabilizers, antidepressants, and anti-anxiety meds to deal with the pain, only for those meds side effects ruining her life almost completely (massive weight gain, loss of employment due to sleep issues caused by said meds), only saved by the building up backlash against Pike and the goodwill of the people cancelling him. This lead to people leaving "Pikehead Studios" (the gamedev team of Northern Pike, formed by him and his relatives, later they all either stepped down or left the studio), quickly replaced by way worse people, however the financial troubles did came eventually, leading to Pikehead and its IPs being consolidated into another studio, and Pike and his band of ableist being let go.

The whole Pike situation is stilll unfolding. One of his cousin (Eastwater Pike) got busted for medical malpractice as a psychiatrist, who promoted "medically assisted ABA" for autistic children and adults, mirroring the behavior of Northern Pike and especially mirroring that even worse case, who is also now a massive transphobe both calling for "real meds not HRT" for trans people, and constantly calling out the nonbinary identity of his former coworker, who is still "too feminine looking for someone claiming to not being a woman". Of course with some digging, people already noticed some patterns of his transphobia, claiming "they should first be treated for other mental disorders, just in case".

They got those teeth, unlike catfish which takes to fisting really well.