Having written hundreds of articles demonizing the amphibian meme as inherently sinister, news outlets have had to perform a quick 180 now that he has been adopted as the mascot of the Hong Kong protest movement.

Pepe the Frog has been everywhere during the past six months of anti-government demonstrations in the Chinese city as a flash graffiti drawn on and washed off walls, a doll holding placards with political slogans and calling for political changes from custom-made t-shirts, in user-made pictures and cartoons circulated on social media and in organizers WhatsApp and Telegram groups.

For the Western media slavishly dedicated to covering the demonstrations from the protesters perspective, this has been awkward, yet impossible to ignore.

Is this not the same Pepe whose alternately self-satisfied and downbeat visage was used as a vehicle for alt-right talking points prior to the 2016 election? The one that candidate Hillary Clinton dedicated a special warning to on her website, saying he had been almost entirely co-opted by white supremacists? The one that the Anti-Defamation League still considers a hate symbol even in its unaltered form?

The simplest route has been to wave this away as a coincidence, with almost every mainstream media article at pains to emphasize that the Hong Kong protesters are not alt-right, and were entirely unaware of the connotations of the cartoon frog, which do not apply outside the US.

More sophisticated explanations have celebrated reclaiming Pepe, recalling that he had begun his life as a stoner joke for a minutiae-obsessed apolitical web cartoon by artist Matt Furie back in 2005, three years before alt-right was even a word.

All that might be correct if not for the glaring similarities between how Pepe was used three years ago and now that make it hard to believe that the current green frog had no lineage.

In both cases the cartoon gave a chance for protest movements to challenge the establishment through his sly subversion. Is Pepe trolling you or is he being serious? When he cries is that just a cheap joke, or a comment about grave imbalances of power? Using him as a truth-sayer figure couched in levels of irony, disarms, gives plausible deniability, and most of all, reflects the young, media-savvy culture that permeates both the Hong Kong movement squaring up to the might of Beijing, and the 4Chan provocateurs who helped Donald Trump get elected against the prevailing cultural winds.

After all the slogan of the Hong Kong crowds is a Bruce Lee quote:be water. Once again, it plays up the amorphousness and flexibility, the anonymity and persistence of the crowd, whether mass-posting online or occupying a public space, trying to shake up the monolithic structures of the ruling elite.

Yet the difference in the coverage, depending on the narrative, is stunning. A satirical cartoon can become the new swastika, and the new swastika can become a symbol of freedom, all without changing. These biases can be seen through the contrasting coverage of say the Yellow Vests and Black Lives Matters or the Maidan protests, but here is a rare test case.

Certainly, the protesters in Hong Kong arent drawing up Hitler mustaches on their Pepes, or making them gloat outside of gas chambers. But frankly, neither did most of the images that circulated through the image boards and continue to crop up in Twitter discussions today. The vilification was largely intellectually dishonest, and relied on picking unrepresentative examples to marginalize what is already a minority hidden on the outskirts of polite internet discourse.

It was also ineffective. Just as Pepe did not die, but returned through ever more postmodernist reincarnations, including the anarchic and popular Clown Pepe who comments on the absurdities of political correctness or the latest big tech censorship, and now again, half-a-world away.

There is a lesson here: you can call Pepe far-right, and equate the OK gesture to Heil Hitler!

But if any dissenters remain, and you are suppressing their ideas, not debating them, the internet will find a way. And for all your billions, armies, and news channels you will be the ones forced to spend your time mass-deleting pictures of memes off the internet to keep your grasp on power.

By Igor Ogorodnev, senior writer at RT

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

Original post:

What the uncanceling of Pepe the Frog just for HK protests, though tells us about US media - RT

"Frog meme" redirects here. For the image of a frog riding a unicycle, see Dat Boi.For other uses, see Pepe.

Humanoid frog drawing turned meme

Pepe in his original format

Pepe the Frog () is a popular Internet meme. A green anthropomorphic frog with a humanoid body, Pepe originated in a comic by Matt Furie called Boy's Club.[2] It became an Internet meme when its popularity steadily grew across Myspace, Gaia Online and 4chan in 2008. By 2015, it had become one of the most popular memes used on 4chan and Tumblr.[3] Different types of Pepe include "Sad Frog", "Smug Frog", "Angry Pepe", "Feels Frog", and "You will never ..." Frog. Since 2014, "Rare Pepes" have been posted on the (sarcastic) "meme market" as if they were trading cards.[4][5][6][7]

By 2016, the character's image had been appropriated[8] as a symbol of the controversial alt-right movement.[9] The Anti-Defamation League added certain incarnations of Pepe the Frog to their database of hate symbols in 2016, adding that not all Pepe memes are racist.[10] Since then, Pepe's creator has publicly expressed his dismay at Pepe being used as a hate symbol.[11]

Pepe the Frog was created by American artist and cartoonist Matt Furie in 2005. Its usage as a meme came from his comic Boy's Club #1. The progenitor of Boy's Club was a zine Furie made on Microsoft Paint called Playtime, which included Pepe as a character.[12] He posted his comic in a series of blog posts on Myspace in 2005.[7][13]

In the comic, Pepe is seen urinating with his pants pulled down to his ankles and the catchphrase "feels good man" was his rationale.[14][15] Furie took those posts down when the printed edition was published in 2006.[7]

"My Pepe philosophy is simple: 'Feels good man.' It is based on the meaning of the word Pepe: 'To go Pepe'. I find complete joy in physically, emotionally, and spiritually serving Pepe and his friends through comics. Each comic is sacred, and the compassion of my readers transcends any differences, the pain, and fear of 'feeling good'."

Matt Furie, 2015 interview with The Daily Dot[2]

Pepe was used in blog posts on Myspace and became an in-joke on Internet forums. In 2008, the page containing Pepe and the catchphrase was scanned and uploaded to 4chan's /b/ board, which has been described as the meme's "permanent home".[7] The meme took off among 4chan users, who adapted Pepe's face and catchphrase to fit different scenarios and emotions, such as melancholy, anger, and surprise.[2] Color was also added; originally a black-and-white line drawing, Pepe became green with brown lips, sometimes in a blue shirt.[13][14] "Feels Guy", or "Wojak", originally an unrelated character typically used to express melancholy, was eventually often paired with Pepe in user-made comics or images.[15]

In 2014, images of Pepe were shared on social media by celebrities such as Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj.[7][14][16] As Pepe became more widespread, 4chan users began referring to particularly creative and unique variants of the meme as "rare Pepes". These images, sometimes as physical paintings,[17][18] were sold on eBay and posted on Craigslist.[2][7] 4chan users referred to those who used the meme outside the website as "normies" (or "normalfags").[7] In 2015, Pepe was #6 on Daily News and Analysis's list of the most important memes and the most retweeted meme on Twitter.[19][20]

Social media service Gab uses a Pepe-like illustration of a frog (named "Gabby") as its logo. The site is popular with the alt-right.[21]

"Esoteric Kekism",[22] or the Cult of Kek,[23] is a term for the parody religion of worshipping Pepe the Frog, which sprang from the similarity of the slang term for laughter, "kek", and the name of the ancient Egyptian frog god of darkness, Kek.[24] This deity, in turn, was associated with Pepe the Frog on internet forums.[24][25] The internet meme has its origin on the internet message forum 4chan and other chans, and the board /pol/ in particular.[24][26] Kek references are closely associated with Trump and the alt-right.[27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34]

"Kek" originated as a variation of "lel", itself a variation of "lol",[35][36] and seems to come from the video game World of Warcraft,[37] or alternatively a Korean onomatopoeia for laughter written as "kekeke".[38] The phrase then became associated with the Egyptian deity of the same name.[24] "Esoteric Kekism" references the "Esoteric Hitlerism" of writer Savitri Devi.[22][39]

Online message boards such as 4chan first noted a similarity between Kek and Pepe.[40][25][41][42] The phrase is widely used[24] and 4chan users see Kek as the "'god' of memes".[43]

Kekistan is a fictional country created by 4chan members that has become a political meme and online movement.[45] According to Ian Miles Cheong, writing in Heat Street, the name is a portmanteau of "kek" and the suffix "-stan", which is Persian for "place of" and the end of several names of actual Central Asian countries and regions, and Kekistanis identify themselves as "shitposters" persecuted by excessive political correctness.[46][47] Self-identified Kekistanis have created a fictional history around the meme, including the invasion and overthrow of other fictional countries such as "Normistan" and "Cuckistan".[48][47] Kekistanis have also adopted Internet personality Gordon Hurd (in his "Big Man Tyrone" persona) as their president and the 1986 Italo disco record "Shadilay" as a national anthem.[47] The record gained attention from the group in September 2016 because of the name of the group (P.E.P.E) and art on the record depicting a frog holding a magic wand.[26]

Cheong credits Carl Benjamin, who uses the pseudonym Sargon of Akkad on YouTube, for popularizing the meme.[46] Benjamin claimed that Kekistanis could technically classify as an ethnic group for the British census, and contacted the Office for National Statistics to request that it be added,[49] but was unsuccessful.[50][bettersourceneeded]

During the 2016 United States presidential election, the meme was connected to Donald Trump's campaign. In October 2015, Trump retweeted a Pepe representation of himself, associated with a video called "You Can't Stump the Trump (Volume 4)".[10][51] Later in the election, Roger Stone and Donald Trump Jr. posted a parody movie poster of The Expendables on Twitter and Instagram titled "The Deplorables", a play on Hillary Clinton's controversial phrase "basket of deplorables", which included Pepe's face among those of members of the Trump family and other figures popular among the alt-right.[52]

Also during the election, various news organizations reported associations of the character with white nationalism and the alt-right.[53][54][55] In May 2016, Olivia Nuzzi of The Daily Beast wrote that there was "an actual campaign to reclaim Pepe from normies" and that "turning Pepe into a white nationalist icon" was an explicit goal of some on the alt-right.[56] In September 2016, an article published on Hillary Clinton's campaign website described Pepe as "a symbol associated with white supremacy" and denounced Trump's campaign for its supposed promotion of the meme.[57][58] The same month, the two sources for Nuzzi's Daily Beast article revealed to The Daily Caller that they had coordinated beforehand to mislead Nuzzi (particularly about the existence of a campaign) under the expectation that she would uncritically repeat what she was told, with one saying, "Basically, I interspersed various nuggets of truth and exaggerated a lot of things, and sometimes outright liedin the interest of making a journalist believe that online Trump supporters are largely a group of meme-jihadis who use a cartoon frog to push Nazi propaganda. Because this was funny to me."[59] The Anti-Defamation League, an American organization opposed to antisemitism, included Pepe in its hate symbol database but noted that most instances of Pepe were not used in a hate-related context.[60][61] In January 2017, in a response to "pundits" calling on Theresa May to disrupt Trump's relationship with Russia, the Russian Embassy in the United Kingdom tweeted an image of Pepe.[62][63] White supremacist Richard B. Spencer, during a street interview after Trump's inauguration, was preparing to explain the meaning of a Pepe pin on his jacket when he was punched in the face, with the resulting video itself becoming the source of many memes.[64][65]

In an interview with Esquire, Furie said of Pepe's usage as a hate symbol, "It sucks, but I can't control it more than anyone can control frogs on the Internet".[66] Fantagraphics Books, Furie's publisher, issued a statement condemning the "illegal and repulsive appropriations of the character".[67] On October 17, Furie published a satirical take of Pepe's appropriation by the alt-right movement on The Nib.[68][69] This was his first comic for the character since he ended Boy's Club in 2012.[1] On May 6, 2017, on Free Comic Book Day, it was announced that Furie had killed Pepe off in response to the character's continued use as a hate symbol.[70][71] But in an interview with Carol Off on her show As It Happens Furie said that despite news of Pepe's death, he will eventually return: "The end is a chance for a new beginning... I got some plans for Pepe that I can't really discuss, but he's going to rise from the ashes like a phoenix... in a puff of marijuana smoke."[72][73] Soon thereafter, Furie announced his intention to "resurrect" Pepe, launching a crowdfunding campaign for a new comic book featuring Pepe.[74]

During the 2016 United States presidential election, Kek became associated with alt-right politics.[75][76][77][78][79][80] Kek is associated with the occurrence of repeating digits, known as "dubs",[original research?] on 4chan, as if he had the ability to influence reality through internet memes.[81]

Since late 2016, the satirical ethnicity of Kekistan has been used by U.S.-based alt-right protesters opposed to what they view as political correctness. These Kekistanis decry the "oppression" of their people and troll counterprotesters by waving the "national flag of Kekistan" (modeled after the Nazi war flag, with the red replaced by green, the Iron Cross replaced by the logo for 4chan, and the swastika replaced by a rubric for KEK).[45][48][82] This flag was prominently displayed at the 2017 Berkeley protest for free speech in mid-April,[83][84] and the Unite the Right rally in August 2017.[85][86]

In June 2017, a proposed app and Flappy Bird clone called "Pepe Scream" was rejected from the Apple App Store due to its depiction of Pepe the Frog. The app's developer, under the name "MrSnrhms", posted a screenshot of his rejection letter on /r/The Donald. The app is available on Google Play.[87][88]

A children's book appropriating the Pepe character, The Adventures of Pepe and Pede, advanced "racist, Islamophobic and hate-filled themes", according to a federal lawsuit Furie filed. The suit was settled out of court in August 2017, with terms including the withdrawal of the book from publication and the profits being donated to the nonprofit Council on American-Islamic Relations. Initially self-published, the book was subsequently published by Post Hill Press.[89] The book's author, a vice-principal with the Denton Independent School District, was reassigned after the publicity.[90]

Read more here:

Pepe the Frog - Wikipedia

Pepe the Frog, a fictional amphibian both beloved and abhorred by Americans of varying political persuasions,has died. Drawn into creation in 2005,he passed away tragically at the hands of his creator, artist Matt Furie, on Saturday.

Birthed in Microsoft Paint, and printed at a local Kinkos shortly after, he has been described by those who knew him personally as chill, peaceful and often stoned. Yet by his time of death,the Boys Club zine star was virtually unrecognizable. Hed, unfortunately, become a darling symbol of the alt-right.

Pepe had a happy upbringing. He spent his early 20s in frog years, that is doing what he loved: chugging pop, snarfing pizza and getting high with his roommates Andy, Brett and Landwolf. Furie gave him a simple life full of simple pleasures, like surfing the web for sick videos and eating so much you barf it all back up. For a few years, at least.

Things got complicated, however, in a seemingly fleeting moment that would prove to be fatal. One day, Pepes roommate caught the frog in a compromising position:peeing, with his pants dropped all the way down to his ankles. His entire butt was exposed, for no reason. It was weird. When Landwolf called Pepe out for it, Pepe responded: Feels good man. The altercation, memorialized in zine, would forever alter the course of Pepes life.

In 2008, a cartoon depicting Pepes smarmy feels good man smile popped up on the message board 4chan. There was something contagious about Pepes indulgent joie de vivre that made internet users share the image again and again and again. It soon went viral,gaining particular traction in, of all places, a bodybuilding forum.

That year, Pepe went from mere image to meme a humorous cultural touchstone, that, like a human gene, could mutate and replicate in strange ways.The more popular a meme Pepe became, the more he began to change, adopting alternate personas like Batman Pepe, Nu Pepe and Borat Pepe, which spread wildly across Reddit, Tumblr, Facebook and Instagram. Each iteration featured the frogs classic mug, his unctuous expression warped this way and that to appear sleepy, dazed, sad and angry.

Pepes internet acclaim continued to grow. Katy Perry shareda bleary-eyed and crying Pepe in 2014, along with the caption Australian jet lag got me like. Nicki Minaj followed suit, posting an image of Pepe showing off his juicy behind in a pair of tight, peach-colored booty shorts.

Ive realized that Pepe is beyond my control, artist Furie told New York Magazine in 2016. Hes like a kid, he grew up and now I have to set him free to live his life. Its all good.

JOSH EDELSON via Getty Images

Pepes future was irreparably thrown off course a year before that, when, in 2015, an online community of white nationalists developed a soft spot for Pepes droopy eyelids and self-satisfied smirk. The dark pockets of the internet launched a campaign to adopt Pepe as their own personal symbol, using the cartoons absurd and somewhat adorable aesthetic to make hateful messages appear playful and benign.

In 2015 and 2016, very different versions of Pepe began proliferating online: Pepe readingMein Kampf, Pepesipping from a swastika teacup, an anti-Semitic caricature of Pepe hinting at his involvementin the Sept. 11 attacks. In style, the green critter still resembled a harmless joke, a stoner cartoon meant to elicit a blazed chuckle or two.Yet Pepes zany cuteness now served to make palatable grossly discriminatory views. As Emily Nussbaum put it: The joke protected the non-joke.

The goal of Pepes makeover, as alt-right internet user @JaredTSwift explained to Olivia Nuzziin 2016, was to use the unassuming frog to usher white nationalism into the mainstream. And it worked. People have adopted our rhetoric, sometimes without even realizing it, Swift said. Were setting up for a massive cultural shift. Pretty soon, Pepe the racist and antisemitic frog far out-shined Pepe the stoner frog in visibility and recognition.Few remembered his glory days as a Boys Club bro, instead understanding Pepe to be the creation of spiteful internet trolls.

During the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump and Pepe forged an unlikely alliance when a Trump-esque Pepe adaptation, complete with yellow floppy hair, appeared to bepolicing the U.S. Mexican border and operating a gas chamber. To most of the internet, Pepe was now synonymous with hate, bigotry and Trump.Some even credit the frog with helping Trump win the election.(According to Furie, Pepe would not be the type to even vote.)

Pepe madness reached a surreal peak in September 2016, when the Anti-Defamation Leaguedeclared Pepe an official hate symbol, much to Furies confusion and disappointment. In my mind, frogs are one of the most peaceful creatures, he told HuffPost. They just chill on lily pads and eat. You never really feel threatened by frogs in nature. I think thats why theyre so popular in fairy-tales. Theyre just ... chill.

Furie did his best to alter Pepes fate, spearheading a social media campaign to#SavePepe.The artist also began to speak out, post-Pepe, against anti-Semitism and online hate at conferences and panels hosted by the ADL. He also collaborated with Save the Frogs!on a line of Pepe-centric goods,with all proceeds benefitting a wildlife organization devoted to protecting endangered frog species.

The artist made a valiant effort to protect Pepe from the garbage forces of the internet. But alas, something about Pepe had changed. And on May 6, 2017, Furie made the executive decision to say goodbye to his little green friend for good. He drew Pepe into death, featuring the frog in an open casket, his buddies toasting him farewell with a bottle of whiskey, which they then proceeded to spill on his face. Furie created the single-page comic for Fantagraphics Worlds Greatest Comics, sordidly markingFree Comic Book Day.

Pepes life was a strange one, perhaps even the first of its kind. While no artwork is immune to possible interpretations that diverge from the artists intention, few images have taken as long, winding and bizarre a journey as little Pepe.

Born a humble character in a cult stoner zine, the benevolent frog was forever altered by internet fame. When Pepe died, he left this world a nationally recognized symbol for white supremacy. Who controls an image? Who can verify its true meaning? A cute, mellow frog became a harbinger of fascism, in part because the whole progression was too weird and kind of funny to take seriously. Kind of like the story of Trump himself.

Now, we believe, Pepe is in a better place. Hopefully hes living the dream: drinking pop with one hand and helping to pee it out with the other.Fare thee well, sweet Pepe. You were too chill for this world. May you rest without fear of being appropriated by trolls for all of eternity.

Follow this link:

An Obituary For The Painfully Misunderstood Pepe The Frog ...

Digital activists have claimed another head. Or, rather, skirt.

On Tuesday, Zara, the Spanish chain owned by Inditex that has more than 2,100 stores in 88 countries around the world and was rated No. 53 on the Forbes 2016 list of the worlds most valuable brands, quietly withdrew a distressed denim miniskirt printed with a cartoon face from its websites and stores in the United States and Britain after it became a subject of social media controversy for the graphics resemblance to Pepe the Frog.

You know, the green amphibian that was originally intended as a peaceful frog-dude, according to Matt Furie, the man who created him, but that was co-opted by anti-Jewish and bigoted groups and designated an alt-right hate symbol by the Anti-Defamation League last September.

The skirt had been on sale as part of Zaras limited-edition oil on denim offering of spring-fling artist partnerships.

Twitter got on it pretty fast. Zara is really out there trying to sell a P*pe the frog skirt, apparently unaware (?) of its current implications, @meaganrosae wrote. Added @ccarella, Hmm Pepe on a Zara skirt.

There is a lot of how did this happen? and how deluded could they be? going around the cybersphere, but the answer may come down to a blunt collision of globalism and cultural ignorance.

A spokeswoman for Zara said: The skirt is part of the limited Oil-on-Denim collection, which was created through collaborations with artists and is only available in selected markets. The designer of the skirt is Mario de Santiago, known online as Yimeisgreat. There is absolutely no link to the suggested theme.

Mr. de Santiago is a Spanish artist based in London whose biography on his official web page states, I like to explore social interactions and gather them into quirky and colourful storytelling compositions. According to Zara, he said the frog face came from a wall painting I drew with friends four years ago. It is not hard to imagine he was unaware a similar frog face had been used for a somewhat different purpose in the United States.

Unfortunately for Zara, however, the brand has a history with public pressure over a product with potentially offensive implications especially anti-Semitic implications which may have exacerbated the reaction. In 2014, it apologized for offering, and then withdrew, a set of childrens striped pajamas with a yellow star on the breast that was widely seen as resembling a concentration camp uniform (the star was supposed to be a sheriffs badge). In 2007, it withdrew a handbag printed with folkloric designs, one of which happened to look a lot like a swastika.

(To be fair, the brand also gets in trouble for non-Jewish issues: Earlier this year, a campaign with the tagline Love Your Curves that featured two notably skinny models got a lot of tweeters pretty worked up.)

All of this may add up to something of a teachable moment for the fast-fashion model. Because the business is based on the constant turnover of new products that are effectively tested on the shop floor, so that companies can respond quickly to what sells and drop less popular items without much cost, it involves a higher than usual amount of churn. This may mean designs are subject to less stringent vetting than they might be in, say, a traditional fashion brand in which products are created and assessed more than six months ahead of production.

Add to that the recent commercialization of the summer festival circuit, in which corporate giants are leveraging the fashion appeal of sartorial rebellion (always a dangerous game, since it co-opts symbols without really understanding their use), and the pitfalls were potentially pretty big. Just think for a minute of the absurdity implicit in choosing a hate symbol to stick on a garment seemingly meant for a summer-of-love/dancing-in-the-muddy-fields-type event. Oops.

Given the increasing role of the internet in policing brands and companies, it was probably only a matter of time before a company attempting to make hay while the music played made a mistake instead.

Consider it a cautionary tale.

Original post:

Zara Loses Its Skirt Over Pepe the Frog - The New York Times

Introducing Pepe Scream, a new voice controlled game where you scream in real life to control Pepe the Frog. Control the Pepe frog to dodge the obstacles, and collect as many chicken tendies as you can. Use the good boy points from your tendies to buy and unlock more rare Pepes. Witness a true display of MLG quickscoping explosion action when you encounter the red pipes up close.

Featured on VICE June 9, 2017: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/pepe-is-banned-from-the-apple-app-store

FeelsBadMan? More like FeelsGoodMan. Pepe Scream comes with more than 25 unique unlockable, original, never before seen RARE PEPES. These dank Pepe the Frog memes include:1. Pepe Pepe. The classic smug and screaming Pepe.2. Sunglasses Pepe. The coolest Pepe3. Mustache Pepe. An artistic, classy Pepe with groomed facial hair and a beret.4. Helicopter Hat Pepe. Pepe with a standard rainbow helicopter beanie.5. Birthday Pepe. Pepe with a birthday hat.6. Top Hat Pepe. A classy Pepe.7. Cat Ear Pepe. The neko Pepe.8. Car Pepe. This is literally a green car that shakes on the screen when you scream. Close enough.9. Construction Pepe. Safety first!10. Afro Pepe. Bringing back the 'fro.11. Australian Pepe. From down under.12. Fedora Pepe. A tip for you, m'lady.13. VR Pepe. A modern virtual reality Pepe.14. Battle Pepe. The Ace of Spades battle worn soldier Pepe.15. Demon Pepe. D E V I L I S H16. Neckbeard Pepe. Greasy, unshaven, and glorious.17. Soviet Pepe. Proletariat frogs unite!18. Santa Pepe. For the Christmas spirit.19. Pretty Pepe. Cute princess frog.20. Pirate Pepe. Arrrr.21. Bowtie Pepe. Classy and clean.22. Invisible Pepe. Call him a certain wrestler/rapper, 'cause he can't be seen.23. Angel Pepe. Divine.24. Roman Pepe. SPQR.25. Glitch Pepe. An ULTRA RARE PEPE. It might even break the game.26. The GOLDEN PEPE, the rarest pepe of them all. You need 1,000 delicious tendies to unlock!

You can yell normies get out and be rewarded with yummy tendies. Find the true Pepe meaning and discover what is Pepe the Frog. Help Pepe trump the red pipe obstacles by screaming in the best frog simulator on the app store. Who is Pepe the Frog, you might ask? After playing this game, providing the voice for Pepe the Frog crying out normies get out reEE, and helping Pepe face the dangers of the Red Pipes, you will know. Pepe Scream, Pepe REEE.

One Pepe, two Pepe.Sad Pepe, smug Pepe.Trump Pepe, racist Pepe.Angry Pepe, dank Pepe.Jumping frog angry frog.The princess and the frog.Pepe the Frog is the planPepe the Frog, Feels Good Man.

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Amazon.com: Pepe Scream: Appstore for Android

Pep Le Pew is a character from the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons, first introduced in 1945. Depicted as a French striped skunk, Pep is constantly in search of love and appreciation. However, his offensive skunk odor and his aggressive pursuit of romance typically cause other characters to run from him.[1]

Pep Le Pew storylines typically involve Pep in pursuit of a female black cat, whom Pep mistakes for a skunk ("la belle femme skunk fatale"). The cat, who was retroactively named Penelope Pussycat, often has a white stripe painted down her back, usually by accident (such as by squeezing under a fence with wet white paint). Penelope frantically races to get away from him because of his putrid odour, his overly aggressive manner or both, while Pep hops after her at a leisurely pace.

The setting is always a mise-en-scne echoing with fractured French. They include Paris in the springtime, the Sahara, the Matterhorn, or the little village of N'est-ce Pas in the French Alps. The exotic locales, such as Algiers, are drawn from the Pep Le Moko story. Settings associated in popular culture with romance, such as the Champs-lyses or the Eiffel Tower, are sometimes present.[2]

Pep describes Penelope as lucky to be the object of his affections, and uses a romantic paradigm to explain his failures to seduce her. For example, he describes a hammer blow to his head as a form of flirtation rather than rejection. Accordingly, he shows no sign of narcissistic injury or loss of confidence no matter how many times he is rebuffed.[2]

In a role-reversal, the Academy Award-winning[3] 1949 short For Scent-imental Reasons ended with an accidentally painted (and now terrified) Pep being pursued by a madly smitten Penelope (who has been dunked in dirty water, leaving her with a ratty appearance and a developing head cold, completely clogging up her nose). It turns out that Pep's new color is just right for her (plus the fact that the paint now covers his putrid scent). Penelope locks him up inside a perfume shop, hiding the key down her chest, and proceeds to chase the now imprisoned and effectively odorless Pep.

In another short, Little Beau Pep, Pep, attempting to find the most arousing cologne with which to impress Penelope, sprays a combination of perfumes and colognes upon himself. This resulted in something close to a love-potion, leading Penelope to fall madly in love with Pep in an explosion of hearts. Pep is revealed to be extremely frightened of overly-affectionate women ("But Madame!"), much to his dismay, as Penelope quickly captures him and smothers him in more love than even he could imagine.

And yet again, in Really Scent, Pep removes his odor by locking himself in a deodorant plant so Penelope (or known as "Fabrette", in this instance a black cat with an unfortunate birthmark) would like him (this is also the only episode that Pep is acutely aware of his own odor, having checked the word "Pew" in the dictionary). However, Penelope (who in this picture is actually trying to have a relationship with Pep because all the male cats of New Orleans take her to be a skunk and run like blazes, but is appalled by his odor) had decided to make her own odor match her appearance and had locked herself in a Limburger cheese factory. Now more forceful and demanding, Penelope quickly corners the terrified Pep, who, after smelling her new stench, wants nothing more than to escape the amorous female cat. Unfortunately, she will not take "no" for an answer and proceeds to chase Pep off into the distance, with no intention of letting him escape.[a]

Although Pep usually mistakes Penelope for a female skunk, in Past Perfumance, he realizes that she is a cat when her stripe washes off. Undeterred, he proceeds to cover his white stripe with black paint, taking the appearance of a cat before resuming the chase.

To emphasise Pep's cheerful dominance of the situation, Penelope is always mute (or more precisely, makes only natural cat sounds, albeit with a stereotypical "le" before each one) in these stories; only the self-deluded Pep speaks (several non-recurring human characters are given minimal dialogue, often nothing more than a repulsed "Le pew!").

Sometimes this formula is varied. In his initial cartoon, Odor-able Kitty, Pep (who was revealed to be an American skunk named Henry in this short) unwittingly pursues a male cat who has deliberately disguised himself as a skunk (complete with the scent of Limburger cheese) in order to scare off a bunch of characters who have mistreated him. Scent-imental Over You has Pep pursuing a female dog who has donned a skunk pelt (mistaking it for a fur coat). In the end, she removes her pelt, revealing that she is a dog. Pep then "reveals" himself as another dog and the two embrace. However, he then reveals to the audience that he is still a skunk. In Wild Over You, Pep attempts to seduce a wild cat that has escaped a zoo (during what is called "Le grande tour du Zoo" at a 1900 exhibition), and painted herself to look like a skunk to escape her keepers. This cartoon is notable for not only diverging from the Pep/female-black-cat dynamic, but also rather cheekily showing that Pep likes to be beaten up, considering the wild cat thrashes him numerous times. Really Scent is also a subversion with Penelope (here called "Fabrette") attracted to him from the beginning, removing the need for Pep to chase her as she goes to him. But Pep's scent still causes a problem for her as they try to build a relationship.

Chuck Jones, Pep's creator, wrote that Pep was based (loosely) on the personality of his Termite Terrace colleague, writer Tedd Pierce, a self-styled "ladies' man" who reportedly always assumed that his infatuations were reciprocated.[4] :119 Pep's voice, provided by Mel Blanc, was based on Charles Boyer's Pp le Moko from Algiers (1938), a remake of the 1937 French film Pp le Moko. Eddie Selzer, animation producerand Jones' bitterest foeat Warners then once profanely commented that no one would laugh at those cartoons.[4] :92 However, this did not keep Selzer from accepting an award for one of Pep's pictures several years later. There have been theories that Pep was based on Maurice Chevalier. However, in the short film, Chuck Jones: Memories of Childhood, Jones says Pep was actually based on himself, but that he was very shy with girls, and Pep obviously was not. A prototype Pep appears in 1947's Bugs Bunny Rides Again, but sounds similar to Porky Pig.

In the shorts, a kind of pseudo-French or Franglais is spoken and written primarily by adding "le" to English words (example: "le skunk de pew"), or by more creative mangling of French expressions with English ones, such as "Sacr Maroon!", "My sweet peanut of brittle", "Come to me, my little melon-baby collie!" or "Ah, my little darling, it is love at first sight, is it not, no?", and "It is love at sight first!" The writer responsible for these malapropisms was Michael Maltese.

Some dialogue from the Oscar-winning 1949 short For Scent-imental Reasons:

Blanc's voice for the character closely resembles the one he used for "Professor Le Blanc", the harried violin instructor on The Jack Benny Program.

Pep Le Pew's cartoons were dubbed in French; in the French version (Pp le putois), Pep speaks with a heavy Italian accent. His voice is a parody of Yves Montand.[b]

Chuck Jones first introduced the character (originally named Stinky) in the 1945 short Odor-able Kitty (see "Variations"), in which he was revealed to be a married American skunk named Henry who had been faking his French accent. For the remaining cartoons Jones directed, Pep retained his accent, nationality, and purported bachelor status throughout, and the object of his pursuit was nearly always female.

A possible[vague] second cameo appearance is at the end of Fair and Worm-er (Chuck Jones, 1946). This skunk doesn't speak, but looks identical (or is a close relation) and shares the same mode of travel and a slight variation of Pep's hopping music. His function here is to chase a string of characters who had all been chasing each other ( la "There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly").

A skunk often identified as Pep appears in the Art Davis-directed cartoon Odor of the Day (1948); in this entry, the theme of romantic pursuit is missing as the skunk (in a non-speaking role, save for a shared "Gesundheit!" at the finish) vies with a male dog for lodging accommodations on a cold winter day. This is one of the two cartoons where the character, if this is indeed Pep, uses his scent-spray as a deliberate weapon: shot from his tail as if it were a machine gun. The other one is Touch and Go, where he frees himself from the jaws of a shark by releasing his odor into the shark's mouth.

Pep makes a more obvious cameo in Dog Pounded (1954), where he is attracted to Sylvester after the latter tried to get around a pack of guard dogs, in his latest attempt to capture and eat Tweety, by painting a white stripe down his back (in Pep's only appearance in a Freleng short).

Pep possibly makes a small appearance as a baby skunk in Mouse-Placed Kitten (1959), where he is reluctantly adopted by a mouse couple at the cartoon's end.

Pep was going to have a cameo in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but was later dropped for reasons unknown.[1]

Pep made several cameo appearances on the 1990 series Tiny Toon Adventures as a professor at Acme Looniversity and the mentor to the female skunk character Fifi La Fume. He appeared briefly in "The Looney Beginning" and had a more extended cameo in "It's a Wonderful Tiny Toon Adventures Christmas Special". The segment "Out of Odor" from the episode "Viewer Mail Day" saw character Elmyra disguise herself as Pep in an attempt to lure Fifi into a trap, only to have Fifi begin aggressively wooing her.

Pep also made a cameo appearances in the Histeria! episode "When America Was Young" and in the Goodfeathers segment, "We're No Pigeons", on Animaniacs.

In the 1995 animated short Carrotblanca, a parody/homage of the classic film Casablanca, both Pep and Penelope appear: Pep (voiced by Greg Burson) as Captain Renault and Penelope (voiced by Tress MacNeille) as "Kitty Ketty" (modeled after Ingrid Bergman's performance as Ilsa). Unlike the character's other appearances in cartoons, Penelope (as Kitty) has extensive speaking parts in Carrotblanca.

In The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries, in the episode, "Platinum Wheel of Fortune", when Sylvester gets a white stripe on his back, a skunk immediately falls in love with him. This is not Pep, but a similar character identified as "Pitu Le Pew" (voiced by Jeff Bennett). However, he does say, "What can I say, Pep Le Pew is my third cousin. It runs in the family". Pep would later appear in the episode "Is Paris Stinking" (once again voiced by Greg Burson), where he pursues Sylvester who is unintentionally dressed in drag. Pep would appear once more in Tweety's High-Flying Adventure, falling in love with both Sylvester and Penelope (Sylvester had gotten a white stripe on his back from Penelope as they fought over Tweety), actually showing a preference for Sylvester.

Pep was, at one point, integral to the storyline for the movie Looney Tunes: Back in Action (voiced by Bruce Lanoil). Originally, once Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, DJ, and Kate arrived in Paris, Pep was to give them a mission briefing inside a gift shop. Perhaps because of the group receiving their equipment in Area 52, Pep's scene was cut, and in the final film, he plays only a bit part, dressed like a police officer, who tries to help DJ (played by Brendan Fraser) after Kate (played by Jenna Elfman) is kidnapped. However, some unused animation of him and Penelope appears during the end credits, thus giving viewers a rare glimpse at his cut scene, and his cut scene appears in the movie's print adaptations. Pep also appears in Space Jam (voiced by Maurice LaMarche), where his voice has curiously been changed into an approximation of Maurice Chevalier, as opposed to more traditional vocalization.

In Loonatics Unleashed, a human based on Pep Le Pew called Pierre Le Pew (voiced by Maurice LaMarche) has appeared as one of the villains of the second season of the show. Additionally, Pep and Penelope Pussycat appear as cameos in a display of Otto the Odd in the episode "The Hunter." In the episode "The World is My Circus," Lexi Bunny complains that "this Pep Le Pew look is definitely not me" after being mutated into a skunk-like creature.

A 2009 Valentine's Day-themed AT&T commercial brings Pep (voiced by Jeff Bennett) and Penelope's relationship up to date, depicting Penelope not as repulsed by Pep, but madly in love with him. The commercial begins with Penelope deliberately painting a white stripe on her own back; when her cell phone rings and displays Pep's picture, Penelope's lovestruck beating heart bulges beneath her chest in a classic cartoon image.

A baby version of Pep Le Pew appeared in Baby Looney Tunes. In the episode "New Cat in Town," everyone thought that he was a cat. Sylvester was the only one who knew the truth. When Daffy was playing with a laptop, Sylvester removed the battery because he was afraid that everybody would avoid him. We also see a grown up version of him on the laptop. In another episode, titled "Stop and Smell Up the Flowers", Pep Le Pew is shown to be good friends with a baby Gossamer, and seemed slightly older than his previous appearance.

Pep Le Pew has appeared in The Looney Tunes Show episode "Members Only" voiced by Ren Auberjonois in Season One and by Jeff Bergman in Season Two. He was present at the arranged marriage of Bugs Bunny and Lola Bunny. Of course Lola eventually fell in love with Pep Le Pew. He also made a short cameo appearance with Penelope Pussycat in the Merrie Melodies segment "Cock of the Walk" sung by Foghorn Leghorn. He appeared in his own music video "Skunk Funk" in the 16th episode "That's My Baby". He also appeared again in another Merrie Melodies segment "You Like/I Like" sung by Mac and Tosh. His first appearance in the second season was in the second episode, entitled, "You've Got Hate Mail", reading a hate-filled email accidentally sent by Daffy Duck. He also had a short appearance in the Christmas special "A Christmas Carol" where he takes part in the song "Christmas Rules." In "Gribbler's Quest," Pep Le Pew is shown to be in the same group therapy with Daffy Duck, Marvin the Martian, and Yosemite Sam.

Pep Le Pew made a cameo in a MetLife commercial in 2012 titled, "Everyone". In it, he was shown hopping along in the forest and when he sees his love interest Penelope Pussycat uptop the back of Battle Cat, he immediately hops after her.

Pep Le Pew has appeared in Looney Tunes: Rabbits Run voiced by Jeff Bergman. In this film, he is the head of a major perfumery who Lola wants to create a signature scent for.

Pep Le Pew appeared in the video games, Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle 3, Looney Tunes: Acme Arsenal, The Bugs Bunny Birthday Blowout, Looney Tunes: Back in Action, Bugs Bunny Rabbit Rampage, and Bugs Bunny: Crazy Castle 4.

In October 2010, it was reported that Mike Myers would voice Pep Le Pew in a feature-length live action film based on the character, although no information about this project has surfaced since.[5] In July 2016, it was revealed at San Diego Comic-Con that Max Landis was penning a Pep Le Pew feature film for Warner Bros.[6]

Pep Le Pew was referenced in the song Beeswax by popular American rock band Nirvana.[7]

(Directed by Chuck Jones unless otherwise indicated)

Go here to see the original:

Pep Le Pew - Wikipedia

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

Heat Street Editor and former British Conservative MP Louise Menschhas writtenan article agreeing with the establishment media and Clinton campaigns claims that Pepe the Frog is a white supremacist icon.Mensch apologized for another Heat Street article by Ian Miles Cheong, who defended the innocent green frog meme last week.

Under the title Hillary Clinton Is Absolutely Right, Pepe Meme Is Antisemitic An Apology, Mensch apologized for Cheongs defence of the cartoon frog, claiming that the piece was inaccurate.

We apologize for publishing it, she wrote, adding an editors note on Cheongs story:This article was wrong and we should never have published it.Pepe the Frog is antisemitic.

Heat Street, backed by Rupert Murdochs News Corp, boasts in its motto: Free speech celebrated. No safe spaces.

Quoting Cheongs claims that no single group or ideology has ownership of the meme, Mensch argues: That is untrue. While Pepe, once a harmless frog meme, may have started out as a widely used meme, the frog is now a symbol of the Nazi Jew-baiting of the alt-right.

Her hyperlinked evidence of this blanket statement is a Google Drive foldertitled Pepe that contains a dozen Nazi-themed Pepe alterations. A Trump/Pepe image, with no Nazi imagery, is included. Nineof the 22 images in the folder do not feature Pepe illustrations at all.

That is the entirety of her argument: one dozen Nazi variants out of thousands of Pepes across the Web. Below I show some handful of antisemitic Pepe / Trump memes, they are everywhere, she writes, before linking to the Drive folder again. She makes no case for theimplicit suggestion that using a Pepe meme without Nazi or anti-Semitic imagery (i.e., the vast majority of Pepe memes) is automatically an embrace of Nazism and anti-Semitism.

Cheong, the managing editor of Gameranx and aprominent playerin the GamerGate controversy, has since retracted the claims of his original piece, stating that he was wrong about Pepe. Cheong reiterates Menschs claims that It has, in fact, become an anti-semitic meme.

Mensch has not yet added an editors note to another Heat Street article contradicting the far lefts white nationalism narrative. Last week, contributor William Hicks posted a piece sarcastically calling pop stars Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj white supremacists for spreading Pepes on their social media accounts.

This article was likely pushing back on the political lefts claim that Donald Trumps son is a racist for posting a Pepe on his Instagram. Mensch is now putting the full force of her editorial authority behind that left-wingnarrative.

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, wrote Elizabeth Chan on behalf of the Clinton campaign last week, in an explainer thatattempted to link the Internet meme with white supremacy.Theyve decided to take back Pepe by adding swastikas and other symbols of anti-semitism and white supremacy.

The explainer based its comments largely on a Daily Beast interview with notorious troll and self-proclaimed parody account, Jared Taylor Swift, who made satirical comments about reclaiming Pepe from the normies. Swift and a fellow troll, Paul Town, later told the Daily Caller that they gave the Daily Beasts Olivia Nuzzi the most ridiculous quotes they could think of and she printed them, falling entirely for the troll. With noevidence but Nuzzis discredited piece, mainstream media reporters have uncritically declared the frog to be anicon for white nationalism on air, including NBCs Katy Tur and ABCs George Stephanopoulos.

Mensch fails to state that the creator of Pepe the Frog, Matt Furie, is actually a Democrat who expressed support for Hillary Clintons campaign, after his favorite candidate, Bernie Sanders, dropped out of the race.

Its weird that people are saying hes been a longtime white supremacist meme, said Furie, who denied that his frog had anything to do with white supremacy. If anything hed be part of the Green party. Hes a frog, why would he support white supremacists? That doesnt make anysense.

But she doesnt need to analyze or even acknowledge any of that information. She has a folder with 12 Nazi Pepes in it, and that is enough for her to shut down any other interpretation.

Charlie Nash is a reporterforBreitbart Tech. You can follow himon Twitter@MrNashingtonorlike his page at Facebook.

Read the original here:

Heat Street Apologizes for Saying Pepe the Frog Isn't Anti ...

Andrew Knight holds a sign of Pepe the frog, an alt-right icon, during a rally in Berkeley, Calif., on April 27. Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

Andrew Knight holds a sign of Pepe the frog, an alt-right icon, during a rally in Berkeley, Calif., on April 27.

With barely an Internet whimper, Pepe the Frog, the anthropomorphic cartoon character turned symbol of hate, was put down by his creator, Matt Furie, over the weekend, in a single-page comic strip. The final images were of Pepe dead in a casket, with three former roommates paying tribute by pouring some liquor on Pepe's face and drinking the rest.

The demise of Pepe who had become a symbol of the alt-right, neo-Nazis and white nationalists was as sad as it was unlikely. Pepe, from the start, was supposed to be a good guy. But in the story of his rise and fall, some universal truths about the nature of modern Internet can be found.

But first, let's look back at just how Pepe came to be.

When Furie created the character in 2005 and later featured him in the comic Boy's Club, he was just trying to make a chill bro who happened to be an animal. "He's a 20-something post-college roommate," Furie told NPR. "He's an anthropomorphic frog that lives with a party wolf, a bear-like creature, and then kind of a muppety, dog-like creature ... in a one-room apartment. And [they] kinda just party together and pull pranks on one another and hug each other and that kind of thing."

Furie said the characters were loosely based on his life, "living with a bunch of guys," and that "Pepe the Frog's more of just the Everyman. He likes to take naps and smoke weed, play video games."

Pepe really took off with one particular comic strip, depicting the frog pulling his pants down all the way to his ankles to urinate. After one of his roommates called him out, Pepe replied, "Feels good man." A star was born.

Denouncement as endorsement

And then, that same star was coopted, stolen by a 4chan fringe. In an effort described to the Daily Beast as a push to "reclaim Pepe from normies," a dedicated group of 4chan users began to tie Pepe to white nationalism beginning around 2015. "We basically mixed Pepe in with Nazi propaganda, etc. We built that association," one user told Daily Beast reporter Olivia Nuzzi.

And during the 2016 election, that fringe ended up successfully tying Pepe to Donald Trump.

"Eventually, a popular meme of the smug frog with Donald Trump's hair started circulating online and then eventually got retweeted by the Donald Trump campaign," said Matthew Schimkowitz, an editor at Know Your Meme. "When that happened, the meaning of Pepe as kind of a white nationalist or alt-right symbol kind of exploded. It was considered by many to be a tactic of dog-whistling from the Trump campaign to that sect of white nationalists online, and it became a new symbol for white nationalists maybe not online. It essentially amplified that specific meaning of Pepe."

But what happened next was telling. Donald Trump's opponent, Hillary Clinton, publicly denounced Pepe, and that only strengthened Pepe's connection to white nationalists, proving that a lot of times online, denouncing something can function as an amplifier.

"I didn't notice anything until there was a Hillary [Clinton] explainer," Furie said.

Schimkowitz added: "Because such high-profile people perhaps the two most famous people on the planet were saying in so much that Pepe is a symbol of the alt-right, that became the kind of meaning for the meme entirely. It's what we call here the Pepe effect. When everyone starts using a meme to mean one specific thing, that essentially becomes the meaning of it."

Furie fought hard to change it. He wrote an essay in Time magazine, to reclaim Pepe. There was a Save Pepe campaign, complete with links to a Save Pepe online shop on Furie's Tumblr. Furie even partnered with the Anti-Defamation League to get Pepe back from white nationalists. Clearly, none of this worked.

"These trolls, or whatever you wanna call them, they're kinda like the loudest voice on the Internet," Furie told NPR, a few days before he killed off Pepe.

Strangely enough, Furie said he made the comic that killed Pepe off just a few weeks after the election, even though it just published online this past weekend. Furie said he had thought about killing Pepe long before the alt-right stole him.

"Honestly, I thought about killing off Pepe just simply when he became a meme, before it was even associated with hate speech," Furie told NPR. "When an artist loses control of their creation, it's never that great." But he said he's not sad about the trajectory of Pepe's life.

Kermit vs. Pepe

The demise of Pepe the frog is particularly sad when compared to the fate of the Internet's other famous amphibian: Kermit. That Muppet character has blossomed over the last year as a tea-sipping, real-talk-providing voice of humor and reason, with a good heart. Perhaps part of why Kermit lived while Pepe died is that Kermit was defined in the culture long before the Internet.

From the start, Jim Henson made him lovable. Not so with Pepe. This frog wasn't etched in the public consciousness before the alt-right got a hold of him. "It basically says that things without very specific meaning can be changed pretty much in an instant," Schimkowitz said. "If a word isn't clearly defined, it can then kind of morph. Memes kind of work the same way."

Schimkowitz compares Kermit the Frog to Superman, in that both characters have definitions that existed long before the Internet, personas that will likely never change, and might face backlash if anyone tried. "In the last couple of Superman movies, there's been a lot of outcry about how dark they made the character," he said. "He wasn't necessarily saving anybody, which is pretty much the opposite of what everybody knows about Superman.

"Superman wasn't doing Superman," Schimkowitz said. "Kermit has that, too. People are so familiar with these characters, that they're not just going to suddenly forget their entire lifetime with them and accept something new."

And that's where Pepe failed, if his takeover by the alt-right could be considered his fault. The frog white nationalists wanted him to be was a stronger character than the one Furie did. And if that's the case, the worst version probably always wins.

Even now, the alt-right seems to be having its way with another symbol: the "OK" hand gesture, though the jury's still out on whether it's becoming a hate sign, or just being used to troll mainstream news outlets.

Either way, chances are, given enough time, it too will morph into something bad, not something better. The moral arc of the Internet is long, but it usually bends towards awful.

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What Pepe The Frog's Death Can Teach Us About ... - NPR.org