Old Meme, New Memeings — The Evolution of Pepe The Frog
From a dank meme to white supremacism, Pepe the frog has been seen everywhere on the internet.
To understand Pepe, you need to first understand what a meme is. There have been a variety of definitions of a meme. According to dictionary.com, a meme is “a cultural item that is transmitted by repetition and replication in a manner analogous to the biological transmission of genes.” This definition is a bit too scholarly for what internet memes really are. The simpler definition can be said as “a piece of culture, typically a joke, which gains influence through online transmission” (Davison, pg 4)
Pepe the Frog is a character from a comic series posted on the social media site Myspace by Matt Furie called, “Boy’s Club.”(dailydot.com) In the internet comic Pepe is an anthropomorphic frog. His face has been used for a variety of reaction faces that’s straight from the comics and has evolved even more with the artistic styles of others. Pepe is the most versatile of all memes, he could be changed to fit any and all situations and emotions, he’s a swiss army knife meme in a sense.
At first the meme originated on the website, 4chan, with a clip of the comic in early 2006. In it Pepe had his pants down around his ankles to urinate and says, “Feels Good Man.”(Knowyourmeme.com) From there the meme took off and the users of 4chan made Pepe into new memes with new meaning.
It took some times before the frog spread to other parts of the internet, however. It wasn’t until 2014 that other social media sites started to pick up on the trend. It started with a Tumblr blog called PepeTheFrogBlog, which posted the various pictures and gifs of Pepe. From there Pepe was seen on Instagram, Reddit, and Facebook. He was seen everywhere to the dismay of 4chan users who let go of any content after it hit mainstream media and became diluted.
4chan users didn’t let this go lightly as they started to submit posts to the boards /r9k/, where the meme originally started, of “rare” images the frog in order to depreciate the value of the meme and flood the market as if the pepe meme were a currency. Because of this new trend with the meme, over 1,200 pictures were posted to an imgur gallery. Soon after the gallery was listed on eBay for bidding and reach $99,166 before it was taken down. (Reddit.com)People ran with the Rare Pepe trend and started to post more and eventually there were over 300 listings of it on eBay as of today.
Pepe had becomes so popular to the point that top celebrities were posting the meme as how they felt on their social media accounts. Pepe had become a household name that even celebrities were able to use the meme.
All the popularity that Pepe had acquired came to an abrupt stop, Pepe suddenly became unacceptable. In an unfortunate turn of events, Pepe was suddenly sporting swastikas and other white supremacist imagery and phrases. A twitter user, @JaredTSwift, was quoted in an article by The Daily Beast saying that this was “an actual campaign to reclaim Pepe from normies.”
Normies, as defined by 4chan users, are people in mainstream society that are like sheep and are boring people. They’re the kind of people that follow what celebrities are doing and continue that trend. 4chan users were afraid of Pepe catching on that they first started the Rare Pepe trend and now others claimed the same reasoning for the Pepe with the swastika. They didn’t want the Pepe joke to die out.
The Daily Beast clocks the timing and location of the turn of the Pepe meme as such:
The issue with the quotes from @JaredTSwift come in the form of his own contradictory tweets. After being cited in Hillary Clinton’s anti-meme article as a White supremacist, he took to twitter and tweeted the following:
It’s impossible to now confirm if these tweets were true or not since his account has been since suspended. Either way, by further pushing the White Supremacist Pepe for satire or actually racist motives just proves that Pepe is a very versatile meme. Memes can take on the tones of so many people depending on who’s using it.
Eventually the White Supremacist Pepe spread to mainstream media when a reporter questioned the meme on twitter.
It was then with the responses that White receive that Pepe the Frog became associated with white supremacy. The meme was further backed by the alt-right and Donald Trump supporters as Pepe was soon bared a striking resemblance to the President-Elect. It went so far as Trump and his son tweeted Pepe Trump memes as well.
Pepe was now reaching the masses and not just social media, but it was invading televisions as well as news outlets reported on the Pepe Trump meme. Hillary Clinton also dealt with the Pepe Trump meme, as a heckler was booted out of one of her rallies for yelling about Pepe. (Dailydot.com) She even addressed the meme in an article on her website about how Pepe was a symbol for white supremacists and this might have been where the label started. (HillaryClinton.com)
The creator of Pepe, Matt Furie, combated the label that Pepe the Frog was now becoming a symbol of hate. He talked with a few news outlets and his publisher even released a statement on his behalf that Pepe wasn’t originally made for nefarious reasons. (Fantagraphics.com) Writing for Time Magazine, Furie had this to say:
“The problem with Pepe is that he’s been stamped a hate symbol by politicians, hate groups, institutions, the media and, because of them, your mom. Before he got wrapped up in politics, Pepe was an inside-joke and a symbol for feeling sad or feeling good and many things in between. I understand that it’s out of my control, but in the end, Pepe is whatever you say he is, and I, the creator, say that Pepe is love.” (Time.com)
Though Furie is reclaiming the Pepe meme for it’s original message, the mere definition of memes prevents him from really doing so. Perhaps the hateful version of Pepe will slowly start to fade but until then he’s just another way for hateful people to express themselves. A meme’s message will always be up to the person who’s using it and meme’s will always be forever evolving. Pepe will remain a swiss army knife meme with pictures that serves any meaning whether good or bad.
