My best explanation for Pepe is sort of a collective Baader Meinhof where 10,000 trolls spending a million hours posting Pepe memes eventually piece together a semi-coherent mythology via a vast trawl through frog symbological history.
It is sort of painfully funny that serious organizations like SPLC and the Clinton campaign have seemingly fallen for an intentional trolling effort. [1]
The weird confluence of Donald Trump, Egyptology, Numerology, and Korean gaming culture. This is too weird to not post. Say what you will about the alt-right and 2016, this is a brilliant exposition on a curious eddy in the current of the national mood. Where it goes is nearly incredible.
What a bullshit article. The author clearly has no idea what the hell they're talking about.
Pepe the frog belongs to the cancer that is /pol/ no more so than pictures with captions using Impact font superimposed over them. The only reason pepe is associated with /pol/ and Trump is because they both originated on 4chan as memes. The Trump versions of pepe comics are only a minority fraction of the many different permutations of the meme, ranging from "smug pepe" to "rare pepes."
He seems to have a really refreshing point of view. My impression is that he seems to feel that the things people do with the character are reflections on society at large and he's interested to watch them.
From the article:
Serwer: How do you feel about the way it’s been adopted by the so-called alt-right?
Furie: My feelings are pretty neutral, this isn’t the first time that Pepe has been used in a negative, weird context. I think it’s just a reflection of the world at large. The internet is basically encompassing some kind of mass consciousness, and Pepe, with his face, he’s got these large, expressive eyes with puffy eyelids and big rounded lips, I just think that people reinvent him in all these different ways, it’s kind of a blank slate. It’s just out of my control, what people are doing with it, and my thoughts on it, are more of amusement.
It'll be interesting to watch the evolution of this meme as it grows. As Matt says, it started as a blank slate. Pepe was not exclusively used by /pol/ and the alt-right. But now I wonder if the attention being drawn to it now might fixate the meme to the political implications. Will Pepe continue to be the blank slate it once was? If it does then it shows how internet memes are inherently uncontrollable. But on the other hand, this accidental relationship with a particular ideology could cause Pepe to fall out of favor with people who want to avoid that association. That would demonstrate how the influence of mainstream media can direct and distort public opinion.
I suppose the third alternative is that for a short time Pepe will be stuck with the right-wing implications. Then later on will see a revival after the memory of today's events fades. Mainstream media will win the battle, but the anonymous masses win the war.
and: http://i.imgur.com/Pe27DXI.jpg
My best explanation for Pepe is sort of a collective Baader Meinhof where 10,000 trolls spending a million hours posting Pepe memes eventually piece together a semi-coherent mythology via a vast trawl through frog symbological history.
It is sort of painfully funny that serious organizations like SPLC and the Clinton campaign have seemingly fallen for an intentional trolling effort. [1]
[1] http://dailycaller.com/2016/09/14/heres-how-two-twitter-pran...