The memes, music, and religions of the Twitch Plays Pokémon experiment

Estimates suggest the world has around 4,200 religions. Thanks to Pokémon, that number is now more like 4,202.

Over the last week, more than 500,000 gamers have logged into gameplay livestreaming service Twitch to play Pokémon Red for the original Game Boy. What’s strange about this is that they aren’t all playing their own game — instead, 60,000 to 120,000 different people are all collectively entering commands into one instance of the classic role-playing title. Viewers can enter button presses (up, down, left, right, B, A, or start) into the chat window of the broadcast page, and an anonymous programmer has set it up so those commands funnel into the game. This has led to some random moments and, insanely, the creation of new faiths.