Burger King Gay Whopper Goes Viral With Help From Twitter

Twitter is reportedly the main force behind a viral campaign surrounding Burger King’s limited edition “Proud Whopper,” which was released in conjunction with last week’s Gay Pride Weekend festivities in San Francisco. 

A video released by Burger King was fueled largely by the social media giant’s feeds, as tweeters spread word of the hamburger chain’s campaign and poured in with commentary, according to CBS News in San Francisco. 

Some of the tweets include:

San Fran Burger King is selling the “Proud Whopper”. Really? Has anyone ever felt proud about eating a Whopper? pic.twitter.com/9pG844eq4i

— Peyton’s Head (@PeytonsHead) July 3, 2014

And: 

Burger King embraces LGBT equality in a simple and profound way – “Proud Whopper” http://t.co/jiIsbEhrCP #pjnet #p2 pic.twitter.com/bzHypKGN95

— Blue DuPage (@BlueDuPage) July 3, 2014

Twitter headquarters are located just one block away from Burger King’s Market Street location, the only one in the world where the rainbow-wrapped burgers are being sold. The “Proud Whopper” will be available through Thursday for $4.29. A matching rainbow crown was also created to accompany it.

“Personally, I find this to be corporate pandering to a group of people that they never cared about before,” said Burger King patron Tom Urani, who told CBS he’d gone to Burger King’s Market Street chain specifically for the crowns. He also said he wanted to send one of the three crowns he’d picked up to England’s Queen Elizabeth II. “It shows that there is change,” Urani said.

In May of this year, Burger King changed their 40-year-old slogan “Have It Your Way” to “Be Your Way,” which the company’s senior vice president for global brand management Fernando Machado cited as a move to make the company more inclusive, in his interview with Time Magazine.

On Friday, the Huffington Post published a piece which headlined the hamburger as a major culprit in global warming and posited that vegetarianism reduces your carbon footprint by a “ridiculous amount.” 

In their piece, they offered their own solution of “veganism” to combat what they consider to be one of the great evils of the day: “As the economic, political, and personal costs of doing nothing to mitigate climate change skyrocket, there’s one lifestyle change that slashes dietary greenhouse gas emissions in half: Veganism.”