Ill cut right to the chase:
Pepe the Frog isnt a white nationalist symbol.
Pepe the Frog isnt a harmless meme propagated by teenagers on the internet.
Pepe the Frog is, in fact, the modern-day avatar ofan ancient Egyptian deity accidentallyresurrectedby online imageboard culture.
Does that sound like the most b@tsh#t crazy thing youve ever heard?
Strap in, friendo. Youre in for one hell of a ride.
(UPDATE 11/9/16: Well memed, America, well memed. A post-election follow-up to this article has been added here.)
The precise origins of Pepe the Frog are, like all imageboards memes, obscure and unimportant.
All you really need to know is that sometime around 2010, a sad-looking cartoon frog began to trend among posters on 4chan.org and similar underground imageboards.
Shortly after, the age-old piece of online vernacular used to express laughterLOLfell out of favor on these sites.
In its place a new slang term of synonymous meaning rose to common use: KEK.
The origins of this trend are much more important. It comes froman odd technicality involving the Korean language and the popular video game World of Warcraft.
Keep that in mind for later.
And so, just like that, twoseemingly unrelatedelements that would later give life to a deity were arranged in piecemeal fashion. But they remained dormant for several years, up until
By this time, Pepe the Frog had become the unofficial mascot for 4chans political discussion board (a highly despised corner of the Internet fittingly entitled Politically Incorrect).
/Pol/ is a place where the unspoken outsiders of Millennial culture gather en masse. Here youll find the lonely and depressed, the socially inept, the generational dropouts, and all shades of disenfranchised youthevery one of them united with an unshakable underdog mentality that pervades the forums every kilobyte.
To call this place a white nationalist or alt-right message board is categorically incorrect. /Pol/, above all else, is place where our societys status quo is mercilessly challenged. Its a melting pot for well-meaning free thinkers and misguided mad men alike.
It isa place of chaos.
So when Donald J. Trump strolled onto the political scene in 2015, it was a match made in heaven. He immediately became /pol/s candidate of choice.
And it wasnt long before Trump was mated with /pol/s beloved mascot, in typical imageboard fashion:
And then, something very strange began to happen
One last thing you need to understand about imageboard culture: dubs.
Every post on 4chan and similar venues comes with an 8-digit numerical stamp. This number represents that posts entry position in the entire posting lineage of the imageboard.
With the amount of traffic these sites get, the last couple digits of this number are essentially a random roll. When a poster gets repeated digits, its called dubs, trips, quads, and so on.
Since a poster cant know their post number until after theyve submitted the post, its common for people to bet the contents of their message on the occurrence of repeating digits, like so:
When that endeavor proves a successful, a GET has been made and the stroke of luck is celebrated.
Out ofthis practice, a strange phenomenon began to take place on /pol/:discussion threads associatedwithTrump displayed noticeably frequent GETs.
It wasnt long before all of these seemingly random elements discussed so far became irreparably tied together within imageboard culture:
and a god was born.
Soon, it became all the rage on /pol/ to hail Trump as nothing less than gods chosen candidate.
Butwhichgods chosen candidate exactly?
The answer is obvious: Kek.
Remember how we learned that kek the meme came about from an obscure Korean languageonomatopoeia, completely independently from Pepe the Frog?
Well, it turns out Kek is alsoand always has beenan ancient Egyptian deity
A frog-headed one.
Quite the coincidence, wouldnt you say? A little, perhaps you reply.
A little indeed, but thats just the verytip of the synchronicityiceberg. Thats just where this unfathomable string of coincidences begins. And where it ends? We just dont know. Day by day this all getting stranger
The second major (little) coincidence can be foundwhen one looks into whatKek stood for among the ancient Egyptian pantheon:
Kuk(also spelled asKekorKeku) is the deification of the primordial concept of darkness in ancient Egyptian religion
Like all four dualistic concepts in the Ogdoad, Kuks male form was depicted as a frog, or as a frog-headed man, and the female form as a snake, or a snake-headed woman. As a symbol of darkness, Kuk also represented obscurity and the unknown, and thus chaos. Also, Kuk was seen as that which occurred before light, thus was known as thebringer-in of light.
And who else, at this point, had been declared a bringer of light into the world by enthusiastic supporters (mainstream and imageboard alike)?
It gets even weirder.
The pot really started to boil when this bizarre misprint statuette was dug up from a mysterious vendor called Ancient Treasures on Amazon. For years the product had been coincidentally mislabeled a KEK statue,despite actually bearing the hieroglyphics for the frog goddess HEQET.
And ya know, the thing about this ONEunique arrangement of hieroglyphicsthey bear an undeniable resemblance to a certain special something:
Do you see it?
A person sitting down. In front of a computer.
Like say, to post on an imageboard?
And whats that on the other side of the computer?
With this holy talismans discovery, The Cult of Kek suddenly took on a concrete form. This new digital faith is summed up neatly in this image passed around on all the major imageboards of the day:
It Gets Weirder: Pepe/Keke Emerges in Plain Sight on September 11th, 2016
Soon, /pol/s users werequite ironically, at firstattributing all strokes of luck for the Trump campaign (and likewise, all strokes of misfortune for the Hillary campaign) to their benevolent frog-headed deity that spoke to them in dubs.
But all of that came to a head on September 11th, 2016, when three major, mind-blowing events transpired within 48 hours of each other. Three events that would change the face of Kek worship forever:
(Note this persons post number)
Heres the short version: Pepe is a cartoon frog who began his internet life as an innocent meme enjoyed by teenagers and pop stars alike.
But in recent months, Pepes been almost entirely co-opted by the white supremacists who call themselves the alt-right. Theyve decided to take back Pepe by adding swastikas and other symbols of anti-semitism and white supremacy.
What can I or anyone else hope to add here? How bizarre does reality get? How deep does the rabbit hole go?
Oh, I see how deep
Now get a load of this one.
While all of this was happening, one or a few anonymous 4chan contributors discovered an old track from the 80s on YouTube. A track stamped all over with a very familiar face:
Thats right folks. A B-side vinyl by performer P. E. P. E., sporting a frog with a magic wand.
A frog.
And whats P. E. P. E. stand for?
Probably. What are sweet repeating digit GETs all about? Probability.
What is this gist of Kekism on /pol/? He speaks to them through dubs. Their ancient egyptian god of obscurity and chaos emerges/enters at points of probability.
Feel like thats a stretch? Check out what the full-length vocal versions album artwork is adorned with:
Dont see the significance? Let 4chan help you:
(Again, note the posts number)
Andheywhos that fair-haired man pointed towards Trump Towers clock in the artwork?
Gee, I wonder who.
Most likely?Chaos Magick.
You see, one of the core tenets of Chaos Magick practice (the only mainstay, really) is the creation of magic sigils (also called glyphs) to codify and project ones Will into the Universe.
Basically, you make an image that represents your will (desire fueled by powerful emotions or altered states) and the universe will take care of the rest.
When a lot of people pool their united willpower towards a single sigil, its called a Hypersigil, and its exponentially more potent.
Pepe/Kek is 4chans hypersigil.
Millions of the little people that browse 4chan have embedded the image of Pepe with their hatred for Hillarys alleged corruption, and their hope for Trumps victory over her in November. Whether they did this consciously or not, its exactly what has happened.
And so far, their hypersigil seems to be working.
Absolutely I am. But you must understand, magic probably isnt what you think it is. Its not about wand-waving or pentagrams or sacrificing babies.
Magick is actually much less involved than that. As a matter of fact, youre casting magick right now. You pretty much always are, whether you like it or not.
Thats because the REAL magic comes from plain and simple human attention. How you look at reality shapes it in ways that were only now beginning to fully understand. Ironically, the science of quantum physics is rapidly bringing the reality of magick to light (shadilay).
In my bookYoure Imagining Things, Ill tell you how it worksand WHY it worksin plain-spoken English. Ill also explain how you can use your attentionto alter your own little pocket of reality in extraordinary ways. Click here to check outYoure Imagining Thingson Amazon.
Most likely? Kek will continue to grow in power and continue to oppose Hillary Clinton and the corrupt political establishment. Will the Lord of Light win out over the powers that be? We shall find out very soon. (UPDATE 11/9/16: We found out what happened, didnt we?)
Yes.
Meme.
(And spread this around on social media.)
(And keep an eye on TheCultofKek.com for big things on the horizon.)
The rest is here:
The Truth About Pepe The Frog And The Cult Of Kek
- What Pepe The Frog's Death Can Teach Us About ... - NPR.org - February 11th, 2018 [February 11th, 2018]
- Heat Street Apologizes for Saying Pepe the Frog Isn't Anti ... - March 16th, 2018 [March 16th, 2018]
- Pep Le Pew - Wikipedia - September 28th, 2018 [September 28th, 2018]
- Amazon.com: Pepe Scream: Appstore for Android - February 20th, 2019 [February 20th, 2019]
- Zara Loses Its Skirt Over Pepe the Frog - The New York Times - February 25th, 2019 [February 25th, 2019]
- An Obituary For The Painfully Misunderstood Pepe The Frog ... - March 29th, 2019 [March 29th, 2019]
- Pepe the Frog - Wikipedia - March 29th, 2019 [March 29th, 2019]
- I 'stormed' Area 51 and it was even weirder than I imagined - The Guardian - September 28th, 2019 [September 28th, 2019]
- What the uncanceling of Pepe the Frog just for HK protests, though tells us about US media - RT - September 28th, 2019 [September 28th, 2019]
- How the alt-right co-opted the OK hand sign to fool the media - The Guardian - October 3rd, 2019 [October 3rd, 2019]
- The 'OK' Hand Gesture Is Now Listed As A Symbol Of Hate - NPR - October 3rd, 2019 [October 3rd, 2019]
- Pepe the protest frog? Hong Kong kids aren't alt-right - FRANCE 24 - October 3rd, 2019 [October 3rd, 2019]
- Why Joker is unlikely to inspire real-world violence - Vox.com - October 16th, 2019 [October 16th, 2019]
- How Area 51 memes enticed a generation to Naruto run at a military base - The Independent - November 12th, 2019 [November 12th, 2019]
- Theater Review: The Slow Launch and Rapid Rise of Dr. Rides American Beach House - Vulture - November 12th, 2019 [November 12th, 2019]
- Inside the extreme right-wings plan to take over campus conservatism - Raw Story - November 12th, 2019 [November 12th, 2019]
- Hong Kong and Cartoons: Art and Its Influence in the Pro-Democracy Protests - The Bagpipe - November 12th, 2019 [November 12th, 2019]
- How Donald Trump Jr. Landed Smack in the Middle of a Right-Wing Civil War - The Daily Beast - November 12th, 2019 [November 12th, 2019]
- Trump, Israel and anti-Semitism: How white nationalists are rattling the American right - Haaretz - December 2nd, 2019 [December 2nd, 2019]
- Hong Kongers mark half year protest anniversary with huge rally - Capital FM Kenya - December 13th, 2019 [December 13th, 2019]
- Our Top 5 Fav Memes From The Decade - 5Why - December 13th, 2019 [December 13th, 2019]
- Worst tweet of the decade was the Vita Coco urine tweet - Business Insider - December 13th, 2019 [December 13th, 2019]
- Overwhelming illustrations put the internet in your eyeballs - Fast Company - December 13th, 2019 [December 13th, 2019]
- Decade list: Top trends and memes - UNR The Nevada Sagebrush - December 13th, 2019 [December 13th, 2019]
- White Power Hand Signal Used During Army-Navy Game - West Point, Annapolis Investigating - Jim Heath TV - December 18th, 2019 [December 18th, 2019]
- Alexander the Bot: The Twitter War for the Macedonian Soul - Balkan Insight - December 18th, 2019 [December 18th, 2019]
- Ive Been Reporting From the Front Lines of the Hong Kong Protests. Heres What It Taught Me About the Power of Art - artnet News - December 18th, 2019 [December 18th, 2019]
- From sexting to politics: How emoji evolved this decade - The Next Web - December 18th, 2019 [December 18th, 2019]
- The memes that defined the 2010s - Vox.com - December 18th, 2019 [December 18th, 2019]
- When the O.K. Sign Is No Longer O.K. - The New York Times - December 18th, 2019 [December 18th, 2019]
- The hope of Chanukah - The Spectator USA - December 26th, 2019 [December 26th, 2019]
- The Top 10 Memes That Defined the Decade - Highsnobiety - December 26th, 2019 [December 26th, 2019]
- We wish we'd written that: STAT staffers share their favorite stories of 2019 - STAT - December 26th, 2019 [December 26th, 2019]
- Hide the Pain Harold is the meme of the decade (according to Imgur) - The Next Web - January 16th, 2020 [January 16th, 2020]
- Sorry Racist Friend, That MLK Quote You Posted Yesterday Meant Nothing Coming From You - Moms - January 25th, 2020 [January 25th, 2020]
- Hong Kong rings in Chinese New Year with protest-themed gifts - Quartz - January 25th, 2020 [January 25th, 2020]
- Big premieres in the Big Sky: 149 films at Big Sky Film Fest - Montana Kaimin - February 13th, 2020 [February 13th, 2020]
- Sundance: Feels Good Man charts a path of redemption for Pepe - TechCrunch - February 13th, 2020 [February 13th, 2020]
- Pepe the Frog - adl.org - February 13th, 2020 [February 13th, 2020]
- The 1975s New Meme-Heavy Video Will Make You Feel 1,000 Years Old - Vulture - February 24th, 2020 [February 24th, 2020]
- What is the 'boogaloo'? How online calls for a violent uprising are hitting the mainstream - NBC News - February 24th, 2020 [February 24th, 2020]
- Civil war talk takes on a life of its own as far-right extremists coalesce around the Boogaloo - AlterNet - February 29th, 2020 [February 29th, 2020]
- SXSW Review: 'Feels Good Man' documents the rise of Pepe the Frog - Vanyaland - March 24th, 2020 [March 24th, 2020]
- Meme of The Decade - The Banner Newspaper - March 24th, 2020 [March 24th, 2020]
- 10 ways to spot online misinformation - The Conversation US - March 31st, 2020 [March 31st, 2020]
- AFLW star Tayla Harris and the kick that ignited the trolls - then punted them to the sidelines - The Age - April 26th, 2020 [April 26th, 2020]
- How Pepe the Frog Became a Nazi Trump Supporter and Alt ... - April 27th, 2020 [April 27th, 2020]
- What Does Pepe the Frog Mean? | Memes by Dictionary.com - April 27th, 2020 [April 27th, 2020]
- Boogaloo Extremists, Banned From Facebook, and the Hawaiian Shirt - The New York Times - July 7th, 2020 [July 7th, 2020]
- Incels: Alienated Men And Violence In The Digital Age - Rantt Media - July 7th, 2020 [July 7th, 2020]
- Drive-In Film Fest Has Debut - Micromedia Publications - July 7th, 2020 [July 7th, 2020]
- Qiana Di Bari, Owner of Sale Pepe in Lahaina, On Racism in the Food Business and Why She Feels At Home On Maui - HONOLULU Magazine - July 7th, 2020 [July 7th, 2020]
- Inside 'Boogaloo' movement 'armed to the teeth' and calling for overthrow of US - Daily Star - July 11th, 2020 [July 11th, 2020]
- What is frog TikTok, and why does it so often cross over with lesbian TikTok? - Metro.co.uk - July 14th, 2020 [July 14th, 2020]
- The Rundown: July 16, 2020 - Multiversity Comics - July 17th, 2020 [July 17th, 2020]
- There's a documentary on the way about Pepe the Frog - entertainment.ie - July 21st, 2020 [July 21st, 2020]
- Most Googled things by US states over past 10 years including Kim Kardashian, Baby Shark and Fortnite - The Sun - July 22nd, 2020 [July 22nd, 2020]
- Disney Plus "Muppets Now" Zoom Video Call With Kermit the Frog And Friends - We Are Movie Geeks - July 22nd, 2020 [July 22nd, 2020]
- Pepe the Frog Creator Tries to Reclaim Meme in Feels Good Man Doc Trailer - Rolling Stone - July 22nd, 2020 [July 22nd, 2020]
- 'Feels Good Man' Will Try To Save Pepe The Frog, The Innocent Cartoon That Became A Hate Symbol - esquire.com - July 22nd, 2020 [July 22nd, 2020]
- What Does The "Pepe The Frog" Meme Mean? | YourTango - July 25th, 2020 [July 25th, 2020]
- Trailer for Award-Winning Doc FEELS GOOD MAN Takes Viewers on an Artist's Journey to Reclaim His Creation 'Pepe the Frog' - GeekTyrant - July 27th, 2020 [July 27th, 2020]
- How 'Pepe the Frog' went from harmless to hate symbol ... - July 27th, 2020 [July 27th, 2020]
- Pepe the Frog - Dictionary.com - July 27th, 2020 [July 27th, 2020]
- Muppets, murderers and a new 'Star Trek' are among 10 things to watch on TV - Salt Lake Tribune - July 31st, 2020 [July 31st, 2020]
- Young Men, Alienation and Violence in the Digital Age - Fair Observer - July 31st, 2020 [July 31st, 2020]
- Muppets Now: Together Again, With a Touch of Amnesia - Rolling Stone - July 31st, 2020 [July 31st, 2020]
- Former Overwatch Pro Silkthread Reveals Blizzard Tried To Fine Him $1000 For Pepe The Frog Tweet - Bounding Into Comics - August 5th, 2020 [August 5th, 2020]
- How White Nationalists Weaponize Motherhood - The Cut - August 7th, 2020 [August 7th, 2020]
- The Hate-Fueled Rise of r/The_Donaldand Its Epic Takedown - WIRED - August 9th, 2020 [August 9th, 2020]
- Donald Trump Jr. has a long history of spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories online - Insider - INSIDER - August 10th, 2020 [August 10th, 2020]
- Open Air Cinema and Streaming Series Continue at The Loft - Tucson Weekly - September 12th, 2020 [September 12th, 2020]
- How Pepe the Frog's Creator Rescued Him From the Alt-Right - Daily Beast - September 12th, 2020 [September 12th, 2020]
- You Can't DM People on 4chan: Arthur Jones and Giorgio Angelini on Pepe the Frog Documentary Feels Good Man - Filmmaker Magazine - September 12th, 2020 [September 12th, 2020]
- Pepe the Frog Mutates from a Far Right Meme Into a Lovable, Far Gone Figure in Feels Good Man - The Texas Observer - September 12th, 2020 [September 12th, 2020]
- An Artist Tries to Save Pepe the Frog From Fascists - Hyperallergic - September 12th, 2020 [September 12th, 2020]
- Movie review: New doc chronicles chilling tale of Pepe the Frog - Online Athens - September 12th, 2020 [September 12th, 2020]
- Documentary details how Pepe the Frog became the mascot of white supremacy - The State Press - October 8th, 2020 [October 8th, 2020]
- Pepe the Frog finds redemption in the Amazon documentary 'Feels Good Man' - Idaho State Journal - October 8th, 2020 [October 8th, 2020]
- Ladbrokes Casino bonus: how good is the 2020 welcome offer? - Telegraph.co.uk - October 10th, 2020 [October 10th, 2020]