Mediaboss Marketing

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.

The rest is here:
An Obituary For The Painfully Misunderstood Pepe The Frog ...

Folsom Lake College notified the local police after finding a poster of a cartoon frog, stating that hate has no home on our campus.

An FLC faculty member found the sheet featuring Pepe the frog on their office door earlier in February. The school informed the Los Rios, California Police Department about the incident so it would be on heightened alert for any signs that this may be part of a larger trend or pattern, according to an email sent to the school community and obtained by Campus Reform.

The picture of the smirking frog appeared alongside other posters pertaining to fascist dog whistles, Democratic Socialists of America, and a week of social justice events.

FLC President Whitney Yamamura, Academic Senate President Paula Haug, Classified Senate President Lindsey Campbell, and Student Senate President Cameron Sanders co-authored the email to the campus community.

[Pepe] has been commonly co-opted by white supremacists and others as a symbol of bigotry, Yamamura and the co-authors said in the email. While we do not immediately know the intentions of the person(s) who posted the picture, we are treating this incident with the highest level of seriousness and have already conducted a sweep of all Folsom Lake College campuses to look for other instances of these materials.

Internet users have edited Pepe the frog to resemble people and creatures varying from President Donald Trump to a unicorn. In May 2016, Twitter trolls tricked a journalist for The Daily Beast into writing a piece claiming that individuals had met up for drinks and plotted morphing the over decade-old meme into a symbol for white nationalism, according to The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Nearly three years later, in their email about an unedited Pepe appearing on campus, Yamamura and the co-authors added that every person on campus should have a place to study and work that is free of bigotry and discrimination. In order to accomplish that goal, the FLC president and co-authors of the email encouraged students to report any additional paraphernalia of a hateful or bigoted nature to staff or faculty. In the statement, Yamamura also provided an email and personal phone number to the colleges Equity Officer.

The college president and the other campus leaders also discussed the importance of providing a safe environment for students, staff, and faculty, but at the same time preserving students right to free speech.

We believe that we can create an environment free of hateful language or symbols while still supporting the rights afforded to us in the First Amendment, the co-authors of the email said. Folsom Lake College has always been, and must continue to be, a place for collegial and mature conversation about complex issues. As a college, we are committed to providing a safe and inclusive learning and working environment, as demonstrated from our ongoing professional development workshops and trainings related to equity and inclusion.

Campus Reform contacted several faculty members at Folsom Lake College multiple times for comment but received no response in time for publication. Campus Reform also reached out to the Queer-Straight Alliance group on campus, but the group declined to make a statement.

Read the rest here:
Calif. College Calls the POLICE Over Pepe the Frog

Artist Matt Furie created Pepe the Frog as an easygoing, bro-like character in his 2005 comic series, The Boys Club. In one comic, Pepe urinates with his pants down at his ankles. Sporting a relieved grin, Pepe says, Feels good man.

Pepes creator told The Daily Dot in April 2015 that the name Pepe (though pronounced differently) evokes pee-pee, in keeping with the literal bathroom humor the original character is known for.

According to Know Your Meme, users began creating their own Pepe images in 2008 in forums on the imageboard site 4chan. These Pepes, riffing on the frogs signature smile, spread online as a humorous reaction, much as people post GIFs to illustrate how they feel about something. One common variant shows a smirking Pepe, often called Smug Pepe, his thumb tucked knowingly under his chin. Additionally, the variants Sad Pepe and Angry Pepe are also common.

By 201415, Pepe had gone full mainstream, with singers Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj notably posting Pepe memes on Twitter. But as The Daily Beast reported in May 2016, some white supremacists were disappointed by Pepes widespread popularity. And so, as a dark and shocking joke, they fashioned Pepes with various anti-Semitic and other racist imagery in efforts to make Pepes widespread use less appealing to those outside their circle. One depicts a caricatured Jewish Pepe smiling at burning Twin Towers on September 11. Another swaps out Pepes Feels good man for Kill all Jews.

Starting around 2015, alt-right supporters of Donald Trump embraced the bigoted Pepe memes, spreading suited-up and blonde-coiffed versions of the frog after the likeness of their candidate. While apparently unaware of Pepes symbolism, Donald Trump retweeted a Trump Pepe in October 2015, as did Donald Trump Jr. following Hillary Clintons basket of deplorables comment in September 2016. Many alt-right social media users have even deployed the frog emoji in their online monikers to represent Pepe and their political affiliations. Pepe has also inspired a hand gesture, resembling the OK sign, that Mediaite claims a ten-year-old flashed on a tour of the White House in March 2017.

This unassuming cartoon frog became so established as a racist symbol that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) labeled Pepe the Frog as a hate symbol in September 2016. Around this time, the Clinton campaign released their own explainer on Pepe, commenting that the cartoon frog is more sinister than you might realize. Another one of Pepes political iterations is as Pepe Le Pen, which depicts French far-right nationalist politician Marie Le Pen as the frog.

Read more:
What Does Pepe the Frog Mean? | Memes by Dictionary.com

Set where you live, what language you speak, and the currency you use. Learn more.

Region Australia Canada France Germany Greece Ireland Italy Japan New Zealand Portugal Russia Spain The Netherlands United Kingdom United States Afghanistan Albania Algeria American Samoa Andorra Angola Anguilla Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Armenia Aruba Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bermuda Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Bouvet Island Brazil British Indian Ocean Territory British Virgin Islands Brunei Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burundi Cambodia Cameroon Canada Cape Verde Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad Chile China Christmas Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Colombia Comoros Congo, Republic of Cook Islands Costa Rica Croatia Curaao Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Falkland Islands (Malvinas) Faroe Islands Fiji Finland France French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern Territories Gabon Gambia Georgia Germany Ghana Gibraltar Greece Greenland Grenada Guadeloupe Guam Guatemala Guinea Guinea-Bissau Guyana Haiti Heard Island and McDonald Islands Holy See (Vatican City State) Honduras Hong Kong Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iraq Ireland Isle of Man Israel Italy Ivory Coast Jamaica Japan Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kiribati Kosovo Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Laos Latvia Lebanon Lesotho Liberia Libya Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Macao Macedonia Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Maldives Mali Malta Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania Mauritius Mayotte Mexico Micronesia, Federated States of Moldova Monaco Mongolia Montenegro Montserrat Morocco Mozambique Myanmar (Burma) Namibia Nauru Nepal Netherlands Antilles New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua Niger Nigeria Niue Norfolk Island Northern Mariana Islands Norway Oman Pakistan Palau Palestinian Territory, Occupied Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Poland Portugal Puerto Rico Qatar Reunion Romania Russia Rwanda Saint Helena Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia Saint Martin (French part) Saint Pierre and Miquelon Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Samoa San Marino Sao Tome and Principe Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia Seychelles Sierra Leone Singapore Sint Maarten (Dutch part) Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia South Africa South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands South Korea South Sudan Spain Sri Lanka Suriname Svalbard and Jan Mayen Swaziland Sweden Switzerland Taiwan Tajikistan Tanzania Thailand The Netherlands Timor-Leste Togo Tokelau Tonga Trinidad Tunisia Turkey Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United States United States Minor Outlying Islands Uruguay U.S. Virgin Islands Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela Vietnam Wallis and Futuna Western Sahara Yemen Zaire (Democratic Republic of Congo) Zambia Zimbabwe

Language Deutsch English (UK) English (US) Espaol Franais Italiano Nederlands Portugus

Currency $ United States Dollar (USD) $ Canadian Dollar (CAD) Euro (EUR) British Pound (GBP) $ Australian Dollar (AUD) Japanese Yen (JPY) K Czech Koruna (CZK) kr Danish Krone (DKK) $ Hong Kong Dollar (HKD) Ft Hungarian Forint (HUF) Israeli Shekel (ILS) RM Malaysian Ringgit (MYR) $ Mexican Peso (MXN) $ New Zealand Dollar (NZD) kr Norwegian Krone (NOK) Philippine Peso (PHP) $ Singapore Dollar (SGD) kr Swedish Krona (SEK) Swiss Franc (CHF) Thai Baht (THB) NT$ Taiwan New Dollar (TWD) z Polish Zloty (PLN) R$ Brazilian Real (BRL)

View original post here:
Pepe the frog | Etsy

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.)

Read the rest here:
The Truth About Pepe The Frog And The Cult Of Kek