Karma is an interesting and unpredictable part of life. Sometimes, it can take months, years, or even decades to show up and balance the scales. And sometimes it strikes in an instant, handing out just desserts like it’s a bake sale for a good cause and everything’s half-off. And karma can push some of its other plans aside to make time for somebody who’s acting hatefully and being very cocky, as one recent event on the water in Moses Lake in Washington proved.

A group of friends was calmly enjoying life on the water when suddenly a boat full of people started circling around them, harassing them, and shouting gay slurs because of their Pride flags. Then karma got involved, instantly—the homophobes’ boat exploded and caught fire. However, the members of the LGBTQ+ community graciously gave their persecutors a helping hand and welcomed them onto their own boat. You’ll find the full videos below, dear Pandas.

Bored Panda reached out to Cosmic Robbie aka Retro_ushi_, who was on the boat flying Pride flags, to hear more about what happened after the incident. Robbie shared that they and their friends have been “absolutely overwhelmed” by the massive amount of support they’ve gotten after the news went viral. “Our initial expectations is that the video would get out locally and we’d have about a 50/50 division between support and hate but so far we have yet to encounter any actual negative feedback. We’re all just happy that no one was severely hurt and everyone made it out alive,” Robbie shared with Bored Panda.

According to Robbie, the Moses Lake Sheriff’s Department has been “extremely supportive” of them from the very beginning. They’ve maintained regular contact with them and “expressed nothing but gratitude and respect throughout this entire ordeal.”

A group of friends was out on the water flying Pride flags when suddenly a boat full of homophobes started harassing them

Image credits: retro_ushi_

However, karma struck back instantly and the bullies’ boat literally exploded. You can see what happened better in the two TikTok videos here

@uhohbigboiWe safely got them out of the water immediately. We were nicer than they were. #pride #lgbtq #boat #Fail #Karma #Gay #hate #sorrynotsorry♬ Oh No – Kreepa

The group even rescued the homophobes who didn’t even thank them

@uhohbigboiReply to @dark_umbre0n Part two with my two best friends @retro_ushi_ and @nova.starr96 #Gay #hate #sorrynotsorry #Karma #Fail #boat #lgbtq #pride♬ original sound – UhOhBigBoi

I was interested to find out whether this sort of behavior was a rare occurrence or frequent in the local area. Robbie stated that this type of harassment is extremely rare in the area.

“We understand we live in a conservative based area, but from what we understand, the perpetrators weren’t local to Moses Lake. We get a mixture of stares, people avoiding eye contact, hesitant waves, eager Greeters and on the day in question we even had a gentleman flash us! (He simply lifted his tank top while hooting at us.) I’d say a majority of people simply choose a focal point and refuse to avert their sight until our flags are conveniently out of sight,” Robbie said.

“And to be honest, we’re all perfectly okay with that. Because we aren’t asking that people acknowledge our presence with only positive feedback. We’re asking that we are respected and treated as human beings, just as we treated the human beings on the other boat,” they said that what they’re looking for is elementary dignity and politeness.

“Unfortunately, it seems that for anyone to listen to my people, the LGBTQ community, we have to both be abused and exceptionally forgiving!” Robbie opened up about the sad reality that incidents like this are pretty much the only way to get attention. “But if there was anyone this mishap could have chosen happened to, it certainly chose the group strong enough to handle it.”

They continued: “Not a single one of the 4 people involved could have accomplished this alone because of the strength we’ve built as a family of hardship. What we want everyone to know is, this experience not only made us stronger as a family AND a community, but it also made up more proud to express who we are and what we stand for; bigots will never make us hide our pride!”

Image credits: UhOhBigBoi

Image credits: UhOhBigBoi

Image credits: UhOhBigBoi

Image credits: UhOhBigBoi

Image credits: UhOhBigBoi

Image credits: UhOhBigBoi

Image credits: UhOhBigBoi

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The group of friends who were the victims of the homophobic harassment was made up of four people, three of whom go by the handles KieferMeise, Retro_ushi_, and Nova_Starr19 on Twitter.

After one of them uploaded a couple of videos from the incident on TikTok, they got nearly 11 million combined views at the time of writing. The harassers circled their boat a whopping six times.

Even after the group rescued the water-logged haters, they weren’t too polite. One of them started vaping even though their rescuers were asthmatics while another kept screaming “hysterically.” The third homophobe, however, kept quiet because they had gone ‘number two’ in their pants because of how scared they were.

“The passengers were quite rude, shouting over us, ignoring my [inquiries] about their well being when on the 911 call and smoking a Vape pen on our boat without even so much as asking if they could; several passengers of our boat have asthma,” Retro_ushi_ aka Robbie told The Washington Post.

Later, the police arrived and extinguished the flames. Meanwhile, the rescued boaters didn’t even say ‘thank you’ and simply left on a friend’s boat when it came for them.

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According to Retro_ushi, the boat explosion may have been a direct result of driving around the LGBTQ+ group to harass them. “They were driving around us so roughly, they either damaged their carburetor or took in water and stalled. Then fumes built up and when they tried to speed away, the fumes ignited,” they wrote on Twitter.

The group of friends had some more updates for the Twitter users who were curious about what happened

Image credits: MethadosA

Image credits: retro_ushi_

While events like this one prove that there’s still a long way to go until the LGBTQ+ community is fully accepted in the United States, there is, nonetheless, some tangible progress to speak of. Just yesterday, I wrote about how President Joe Biden issued a presidential proclamation that officially recognized June as Pride Month, earlier this week.

The President vowed to fight for full equality for the LGBTQ+ community and to codify this into law to ensure tolerance, dignity, and protection of human rights.

“After four years of relentless attacks on L.G.B.T.Q.+ rights, the Biden-Harris administration has taken historic actions to accelerate the march toward full L.G.B.T.Q.+ equality,” the White House stated on Tuesday, June 1.

Here’s what some internet users said after seeing the videos and reading the Twitter threads about the incident on Moses Lake in Washington

Image credits: ToolofParanoia

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Image credits: _Sandy_Toes_

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