The internet gets itself in a tizz over the strangest things sometimes. The colour of a dress, the direction in which a cat is walking and now some guy who gave himself a terrible tattoo of a Pokemon character.

Let’s start from the beginning. Here’s the picture that was posted yesterday on Reddit, headed ‘“My friend was drunk and on Xanax when he decided to tattoo a black face Charmander with no experience or artistic ability. The flame saves it’:

The flames save it? If you say so buddy. As a point of reference here is what the character ‘Charmander’ really looks like:

Now rather than mock and ridicule (or blame Pokemon for homosexuality) users have posted their tributes to what is now being called ‘Shartmander’. There was this image, created by artist Vaughn Pinpin, which may well have been the inspiration behind the tattoo:

It’s not all fun and games, however, as Pocket Monster reports:

…a number of people are trying to capitalize (sic) on the meme by selling things such as T-Shirts and other miscellaneous items that have the Shartmander printed on them. This is occurring in spite of the fact that many of the images take heavy inspiration from the work of Pinpin, who is often not even credited as inspiration.

Someone trying to make money off of someone else’s creation? Now that sounds more like the internet we know. Here’s another user-submitted tribute to the Shartmander:

Top notch stuff. Do you feel like reading this post was a few minutes of your life you may never get back? Well, imagine writing it then.

[source:pocketmonster]