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When streamer Chonkikage first joined Twitch, she knew already that Pepe The Frog was a hate symbol used by the alt-right.

Yet the prevalence of the little green frog across the platform made her question whether it had been reclaimed.

When I first started streaming on Twitch and I saw Pepe emotes everywhere I was like, this is very weird, she says. But I noticed people were using it in friendly ways from my experience, so I was like oh maybe its reclaimed, maybe its been adopted, its part of the culture.

Pepe The Frog emotes are among the most popular on the platform. Theyre not included as standard, but through third-party plugins like Better TTV and are used by viewers through the chat function as shorthand reactions to streamers.

The meme blew up in the 2010s but was adopted by alt-right groups on messageboard sites like 4chan, as outlined in last years documentary Feels Good, Man. The image has since been listed as a hate symbol by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) but it remains in use across the internet, including Twitch.

Since then, LGBT+ Twitch streamers are fighting back by banning Pepe The Frog emotes from their streams.

There are viewers who use the emote innocently enough, while others have specifically attempted to reclaim the image for good.

Reclaiming is a complicated process if its happening at all, says Chonkikage. It would take time for a symbol to be fully reclaimed anyway by the communities that its harmed.

Even if I havent been attacked by it or I havent seen people use it in a negative way, its making [marginalised] people uncomfortable and if theyre saying that they dont want to be in a space where they see that symbol because its hate speech to them, its traumatising, just remove it.

She continues: But continuing to have Pepewhen you hear them say that its harmful to them and they dont feel comfortable in that space and then youre like oh well, I like Pepe, what does that say?

Story continues

Thats why Chonkikage, a full-time non-binary streamer and graphic designer, decided to create some alternative emotes. Named Froogy, the new emotes are available for anyone to use for free using the Better TTV plugin.

Im going to draw my own version and let people use it and itll be cute and different and just replace those other ones, she says. Thats how I saw it. I chose a frog because were going to get a better frog!

There are multiple Froogy emotes available that act as direct analogues to the most popular Pepe The Frog emotes. Froogy is a cute and innocent alternative, which viewers can use without the implied (though often unintentional) undertones of white supremacy.

Froogy emotes. (Chonkikage)

So far the emotes have been downloaded and used by hundreds of streamers since their creation back in January.

Seeing Pepe being replaced by them is wonderful, says Chonkikage. I live my values on my stream and I put my whole heart into these emotes. I feel like everyone who uses them is the same way so its great.

Chonkikage is keen to point out that streamers dont have to only use Froogy instead of Pepe The Frog. Her emote is simply one alternative, there for streamers and viewers to use if they like. After all, there are an infinite number of emotes that can be used for reactions that arent hate symbols, unlike Pepe.

Seeing the emotes being used by others is just a small way to spread positivity on the Twitch platform.

It makes me feel great because I know theyre taking the conscious effort to be more inclusive and understanding of people, says Chonkikage.

Its subtle, I know its just an emote, but people that are actively choosing to replace [Pepe] with Froogy have this in mind and it makes those spaces feel safe.

You can download the Froogy emotes on Better TTV.

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Meet the non-binary Twitch streamer whos creating alternative emotes to combat white supremacists - Yahoo News UK

The past year has been a tough one for the movie business. But despite the widespread closure of theaters and delays in releases,an impressive bunch of films related to the arts have come out.

From dueling documentaries on the infamous Knoedler forgery scandal to biopics on artists M.C. Escher to DavidWojnarowicz, here are 19 new art movies and where to stream them.

Undoubtably one of the biggest art scandals of the 21st century, the Knoedler forgery ring saw the eminent U.S. gallery sell some $80 million in forged mid-century masterpieces. Those involved said they did so unknowingly, despite an unverifiable provenances, wildly anachronistic materials, and, most damningly, a misspelled signature. Daria Price covers it all in this documentary. (Bonus: The film features expert commentary from Artnet Newss senior market editor Eileen Kinsella.)

Knoedler forgery scandal, take two. This documentary interviews Ann Freedman, the gallerys president, and a central figure in the forgery ring. She presents herself as the scams biggest victimbut was she actually its mastermind?

Chris McKim draws on the audio journals of the late artistDavid Wojnarowiczplus commentary from the likes of Fran Lebowitz, art dealer Gracie Mansion, and art critic Carlo McCormickto paint a full picture of the queer painter, photographer, writer, and activist, who died in 1992 of AIDS. The obscene title comes from a graffiti message that Wojnarowicz found scrawled on the street and appropriated for his art.

Artist Matthew Taylor directs a love letter toMarcel Duchamp, who changed the course of art history not once, but twice. First with his Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2,which ignited controversyat the 1913 Armory Show in New Yorkeven as it ushered the Modernist movement into the mainstream, and then withThe Fountain, his urinal readymade that became a legendary Dada masterpiece.

Jennifer Trainer, who spent decades as the head of public relations at MASS MoCAin North Adams, Massachusetts (and is married to Joseph C. Thompson, its former director), directs a film celebrating the institution and the way it revitalized a rural town after local factories shut down. Meryl Streep offers some star power as the documentarys narrator.

Artist Ursula von Rydingsvard, known for her monumental wooden sculptures, shaped from towering cedar trunks, offers a behind-the-scenes look at the studio machinations that make her large-scale public artworks possible.

Novelist and filmmaker Veronica Gonzalez Pea spent two years interviewing the painterPat Steirin this intimate portrait of the groundbreaking feminist artist and her beloved waterfall paintings, made by dripping, splashing, and pouring paint.

For this documentary, director Dennis Scholl gained access to the personal life of Abstract Expressionist Clyfford Stillin the form of 34 hours of audio recordings of the artist, as well as interviews with his daughters, Diane Still Knox and Sandra Still Campbell.

Carlos Almarazwas a Los Angeles artist and Chicano art activist who died of AIDS in 1989. His widow, artist Elsa Flores Almaraz, along with actor Richard J. Montoya, co-direct this Netflix documentary about his life and legacy, including his struggles to come to terms with his identity as a Chicano and his bisexuality. Watch to find out why David Hockney, Richard Diebenkorn, Jack Nicholson, and Cheech Marin have all been fans ofAlmarazs work.

This HBO documentary is largely narrated by artist and curator David Driskell, who died last year. The film explains the influence of his seminal 1976 group show Two Centuries of Black American Art, and features prominent Black artists working today, includingTheaster Gates,Kehinde Wiley,andJordan Casteel,

After decades of supporting institutions behind the scenesincluding more than a decade heading the board at the Museum of Modern ArtNew York City art philanthropist Agnes Gund gets her moment in the sun with this documentary directed by her daughter Catherine Gund.

Illustrator Matt Furie never could have predicted the afterlife of Pepe the Frog, a character from his comic book seriesBoys Club. This documentary from Arthur Jones unravels the mystery of how the slacker frog morphed first into an internet mascot and a symbol of hate for the alt-rightand how Furie attempted to reclaim his most famous creation.

Martha Cooper, who in the 1970s became the first female staff photographer at the New York Post, has made a name for herself as the foremost documenter of graffiti art in New York City. Now, her unlikely career is itself the subject of a documentary film, directed by Selina Miles.

Norwegian filmmaker Benjamin Ree found a pair of unlikely documentary subjects in Barbora Kysilkova, a Czech painter, and Karl-Bertil Nordland, a thief that stole two of her paintings. The movie tracks their unlikely relationship as Kysilkova attempts to paint a portrait of the heavily tattooed criminal who committed the robbery because, she says, they were beautiful.

You might not know the name Gustav Stickley, but the late designer was a key figure in the American Arts and Crafts movement, which rebelled against industrialization. Director Herb Stratford provides a full picture of Stickleys life and career, and whats behind his lasting significance.

The mind-bending work of M.C. Escher, known for his optical illusions, was an exploration of both art and mathematics. Director Robin Lutz explores the evolution of the Dutch printmakers increasingly intricate work, animating his illustrations to stunning effect, with voiceovers from actor Stephen Fry.

This documentary from Aurlia Rouvier and Seamus Haley explores the various theories as to the identity of anonymous British street artist Banksy and praises his high-profile stunts, likeLove Is in the Bin, the shredding of aBalloon Girl print after it sold at auction. Its likely to be enjoyed most by diehard Banksy fans (one talking head apparently claims that Banksy is the Picasso of the 21st century).

In this indie film, directed by Michael Walker, three art school grads are determined to navigate the New York art world, even if they that means resorting to blackmail, betraying their friends, andperhaps worst of allpainting their own mothers in the nude. (Full disclosure: a group of real-life art-world professionals were called in as extras in the penultimate scene at a gallery opening, so keep an eye out for the writer.)

Director Halina Dyrschk continues the important work of restoring the legacy of pioneering Swedish painter Hilma af Klint, who began experimenting with abstraction five years before it was invented by Wassily Kandinsky. The film recounts Klints life and career, her descent into obscurity, and ultimate rediscovery, including theblockbuster 2019 exhibitionof her work at the Guggenheim Museum New York.

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Here Are 19 Great New Art Movies You Can Stream Now, From a Philosophical Ode to Banksy to Dueling Exposs on the Knoedler Scandal - artnet News

A meme: an image, video, piece of text, etc., typically humorous in nature, that is copied and spread rapidly by internet users, often with slight variations.

Alt right: a right-wing ideological movement characterized by a rejection of mainstream politics(usually conservative politics) and by the use of online media to disseminate provocative content, often expressing opposition to racial, religious, or gender equality.

4chan: an online anonymous message board

Doxed: someone is to publicly identify or publish private information about that person

/pol/(short for politically incorrect): a forum on 4chan where people talk about politics, commonly associated with neo nazis and the alt-right.up to 30% of messages contain hate speech on the forum.

Everyone loves memes right? Well that Everyone includes the alt-right and over the last 5-6 years the alt-right have used memes and internet culture and gamingto recruit people into, sometimes neo-Nazi, organizations. This all reached a worrying crescendo at the capitol insurrection of January the 6th.

How did this happen?

A Report from the Media and manipulation project at the data society, an independent nonprofit research organization, credits the rise of the alt right to gamergate. gamergate started in 2014 when a few women, most notably Zoe Quinn, in the industry started calling out casual sexism withing videogames. These article where then used by a small group of people on the 4chan website to effectively wind up the gamer community and prove how in there eyes all feminists are evil. This small group used the the Gamer identity of a geeky, uneducated, unemployed male who may have trouble finding a romantic relationship, to perpetuate this anger at feminists in general. Quinn and other feminists were doxed and threatened. Although gamer gate finished in 2015, the seeds had been sown and internet culture had its first taste of being politicised. It also was a key moment for alt right leaders, who saw the power of gamer and meme culture to infiltrate communities and divide, in this case by gender.From gamergate communities such as mens rights activists and Incels(involuntary celibates) grew hugely in popularity.

The common feeling between gamers and the alt right, is that of oppression. During gamer-gate gamers were made to feel like they were oppressed as Journalists were attacking there games for sexism. This is the same feeling of Neo-nazis and white supremacists. The alt right used this feeling to radicalize gamers and those in the online world.

A key problem is the blurring of the line between a joke and something serious. At first someone may say I really like adolf Hitler this seems so ridiculous so is therefore taken as a joke, but once many others start to spew neo nazi and racist hate it becomes serious. The alt right infiltrate these servers and start posting things.

Another common tactic is hijacking memes such as pepe the frog, for many this is where the lines blur. The pepe the frog meme was once a harmless joke, but a white supremacist campaign which started on 4chan. The joke is used by both the alt right and the average internet user, so it is very hard to tell who is who. Therefore you cannot tell who is alt right and who isnt.

Real world impacts

Just a few years ago we saw the devastating impacts of radicalization during the Charlottesville unite the right rally, we saw a huge gathering of alt right members some of which dressed as.the pepe the frog meme and also the based stick man meme. There was 1 dead at the Charlottesville rally, the perpetrator was a known gamer. He had a prior criminal record involving violence towards his mother, when she asked him to stop playing games.

With the rise of Qanon, they are also targeting young people on social media, but they are using aesthetic to lure them in with the hashtag #savethechildren both president trumps campaigns have been shrouded with alt right activity for example the proud boys.

Conclusion

Like all young internet users I look at memes and enjoy them, just because they are used by the alt-right should not mean a full on ban of memes, that would be absurd. But legislation on the internet is outdated and has to be updated.

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How Gamers and memes prompted a new wave of Neo-nazism by Felix Von der Geest Hampton school - This is Local London

When fast-food companies get bad press, it's often due to their own marketing efforts backfiring. Burger King's tone-deaf International Women's Day tweet is a striking recent example. The McDonald's "#McDStories" campaign created the opposite of a feel-good response in a similar fashion when a 2018 Twitter campaign meant to promote McDonald's farmers prompted the sharing of negative stories about the brand instead. Even Wendy's once tweeted a dubious Pepe the Frog meme. Putting the proverbial foot in the mouth is practically a tradition with fast-food brands.

Sometimes, however, it's not the ads but the food itself that causes controversy, and the backlash in such cases can be more severe. The "all press is good press" saying doesn't quite hold up in the restaurant industry when the press is about menu items falling short of expectations or worse, causing digestive issues.

Here's a look at some of the most controversial menu items ever to be released in the fast-food industry. And for more, check out 9 Biggest McDonalds Controversies of 2020.

This pita-based sandwich from McDonald'sreportedly based on an original African recipedebuted in Norway in 2002. At the time of its release, parts of southern Africa, including Malawi and Zimbabwe, were experiencing famine conditions. The general public as well as the Norwegian Church Aid criticized McDonald's for its "inappropriate and distasteful" product launch.

Although Mcdonald's did not remove the McAfrika from its menu, it made a small concession by allowing charitable groups to collect donations at participating Norwegian locations. And as if they didn't fully get the message the first time around, McDonald's brought the McAfrika back to its menu in 2008, in time for the Olympicsand received a similarly negative reception.

RELATED: Don't forget to sign up for our newsletter to get the latest restaurant news delivered straight to your inbox.

Even canonical fast-food menu items can come under fire. In 2013, an Australian teen shared an image on Subway's Facebook page of a signature Subway footlong sandwich next to a rulerwhich clearly showed its true length to be eleven inches.

The image went viral and other customers began voicing similar complaints. Subway eventually issued a public statement in the Chicago Tribune, committing itself to greater consistency in its products. That wasn't enough for some customers, though, and a group of ten filed a class-action lawsuit against the sandwich chain. After years in court, the plaintiffs were awarded $500 apieceplus legal fees.

In 2015, Burger King launched the A1 Halloween Whopper, a regular Whopper burger served on a black bun which supposedly got its color from the A1 sauce being mixed directly into the dough. And while a nice idea, shortly after the burger's debut, stories began to circulate on Twitter about the product's effect on customers' bowel movements.

Many were reporting changes in the color of their stool, which was "almost grass green," according to one customer who perfectly summarized the popular opinion. Pamela Reilly, a naturopath interviewed by USA Today on the subject, speculated that the cause of the discoloration was probably the quantity of food dye used in the bunsnot the same kind of food dye used by A1, but a more "concentrated form." It's never a good day when stool color remains a burger's best-remembered legacy.

McDonald's debut of the McLean Deluxe in 1991 was its first foray into the emerging market of adult fast-food. The McLean was presented as a healthier version of the chain's popular hamburgers, and a whole line of Deluxe products was rolled out during the '90s.

However, the sales of the healthy burger failed to materialize, in part because the low-fat beef on which the McLean concept was based was not a hit with customers. The McLean burger patties lacked the taste and consistency of the traditional McDonald's burger. Moreover, a key ingredient in the McLean recipe turned out to be carrageenanan organic material related to seaweedwhich didn't make matters any better in terms of publicity or flavor. Within a few years of its debut, sales declined, and the item was eventually removed from the. McDonald's menu, only to be remembered as one of fast-food industry's biggest fails of all time.

McDonald's Szechuan Sauce was originally released in 1998 as a tie-in product for Disney's feature film Mulan. But the backlash against the sauce and its related advertising was almost immediate. Paul Leung, a Chinese-American Cornell student, started an email campaign criticizing McDonald's for the use of offensive imagery and language in its advertisingmaterial which Entertainment Weekly characterized as "ethnic stereotyping." Within a month of its release, the Szechuan sauce was removed from the menu.

The story doesn't end there, though. Due to some unsolicited promotion from Cartoon Network's animated show Rick and Morty, the demand for the Szechuan sauce suddenly re-emerged in 2017and McDonald's rose to meet it. The re-release was, unfortunately, botched. The chain ended up underestimating the demand for the product, which quickly sold out and enraged customers. Mobs of irate fans in California and Florida, clamoring for Szechuan Sauce, had the police called on them.

For more, check out the 108 Most Popular Sodas Ranked By How Toxic They Are.

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5 Most Controversial Fast-Food Items Ever Created | Eat This Not That - Eat This, Not That

A .gif of Nyan Cat sold for lots and lots (and lots) of money as an NFT.

Cryptocurrency is no longer the strangest online trend -- Those reins have been taken byNFTs. Nonfungible tokens have become a sensation, or scandal, thanks to the headline-grabbing insanity of it all: Memes being sold for the cost of a Tesla, tweets fetching seven-figure bids and digital art selling for $69 million.

Nonfungible assets are those that aren't interchangeable with one another. Every $100 bill holds the same value as any other $100 bill, therefore they are fungible. Houses, cars and collectables are nonfungible: Houses of the same size on the same street will sell for different prices, and the same model of the same car can similarly vary in cost.

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Which takes us to nonfungible tokens. They're essentially certifications of ownership recorded on a blockchain. Nonfungible tokens put the ownership of a digital product -- be it digital art, a video clip or even just a jpeg or gif -- on that ledger. In the age of NFTs, downloading a picture is like owning a print. Having the NFT is like owning the original painting.

Real digital artists are making real money on NFTs. Take Beeple. He's a digital artist with a huge fanbase, over 1.8 million followers on Instagram. Art he sold as an NFT recently fetched $69 million in a Christie's auction. That's insane to you or me, but not to people who frequent Christie's auctions, who spend $60 million on abstract expressionist paintings.

But even if there is a small percentage of NFT sales you can make sense of, there are many more which are absolutely, positively nuts.

For example...

When COVID-19 lockdown began last March, Brooklyn filmmaker Alex Ramrez-Mallis and four friends did the obvious thing: Started sending audio recordings of their farts to one another through a WhatsApp group chat. One year later, Ramrez-Mallis is auctioning 52 minutes of audio flatulence as an NFT.

The auction's starting price: $85. Would you pay $85 for farts? Would be a solid investment if you did, since someone out there was ultimately willing to pay 0.24 ethereum, or about $420, for the NFT. What's more, in addition to selling the 52-minute recording, he's also selling NFTs for individual farts. Several have been sold, including Fart #420for about $90.

"If people are selling digital art and GIFs, why not sell farts?" Ramrez-Mallistold the New York Post. Truer words, never spoken.

As the NFT craze catches headlines, brands are jumping on the bandwagon. Example, toilet-paper maker Charmin. In a series of tweets last week, Charmin introduced digital art -- various illustrations of rolls of toilet paper -- that it'll be putting up for sale as NFTs.

One, which looks potentially seizure inducing, has a top bid of roughly $2,120 (1.25 wrapped-ethereum). That's not a lot in the scheme of silly NFT sales, but it's a lot to spend on a toilet-paper advertisement. There are five other NFTs for sale, with bids ranging from $500 (0.3 wrapped-ethereum) to $1,693 (1 wrapped-ethereum).

"All proceeds will be donated to Direct Relief," Charmin said, "as part of our ongoing efforts to improve the lives of people impacted by poverty or emergency situations around the world."

Bad Luck Brian.

Remember Bad Luck Brian? It was a meme popularized in 2012, when a yearbook photo of high school student Kyle Craven, depicting him with braces and a plaid sweater, was posted to Reddit. People would post the picture with macro captions of unfortunate events, like "Escapes burning building. Gets hit by firetruck." (Most of the good ones are too NSFW for me to post here.)

Kyle Craven has had the last laugh, though, selling the yearbook photo as an NFT for $36,000. It's kind of a beautiful underdog story for the digital age. Kind of.

This art was sold as an NFT in $38,000 in 2018 and flipped three years later for $320,000.

This one is dumb, but also is an illustrative example of why people are buying NFTs: to sell them for more later on.

The above piece of art is like a Pokemon card for a hell-creature merge of Homer Simpson and Pepe the frog. Homer Simpson is, well, Homer Simpson, and Pepe is an internet frog that's popular on 4chan and other areas of the internet. The NFT for this art recently sold for $320,000.

The crazy part? The person who sold it wasn't its creator.He bought it back in 2018 for $38,000. So as preposterous as all of this NFT business is, it's worth noting that some people are actually making a lot of money flipping them.

Now we get into the stupid money.

Nyan Cat was a YouTube sensation nearly 10 years ago. It was a video of a pixelated cat with a Pop-Tart for a torso, along with the tune of a Japanese pop song. It has over 185 million views on YouTube, and has become a ubiquitous gif in the years since.

"The design of Nyan Cat was inspired by my cat Marty, who crossed the Rainbow Bridge but lives on in spirit," wrote its creator on the sales page for the NFT of Nyan Cat. It would end up selling for 300 ethereum -- $531,000.

"Just setting up my twttr," tweeted Jack Dorsey, co-founder and CEO of Twitter, back in 2006. Turns out that each of those words is worth over $580,000, as the NFT for that tweet sold for $2.9 million.

Dorsey has said the proceeds will be turned into Bitcoin and donated to GiveDirectly, a charity that helps six African countries with COVID-19 relief.

The philanthropy is nice -- not to be understated, since it'll likely save thousands of lives -- but there's also some clever marketing at play here. NFTs are closely related to cryptocurrency, since both are based on blockchain, to the point where NFTs are almost always bought with Ethereum, the second biggest currency after Bitcoin. So if you're a big investor in cryptocurrency, like Dorsey is, inflating the NFT bubble isn't a bad way to help your cryptoholdings appreciate.

Which is why it's not surprising to see Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweet about NFTs, and tease selling one in the future.

But despite the philanthropy, the guerrilla marketing and the distinct possibility that the buyer will be able to flip the tweet for $10 million in a few years, dropping $2.9 million on a tweet is a sign we've entered a new era of internet insanity.

See also: NFTs explained: These pricey tokens are as weird as you think they are

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