Pepe the Frog is a popular Internet meme. The fictional green anthropomorphic frog with a frog-like face and a humanoid body is originally from a comic series 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 Tumblr. Beginning in 2016, his image has increasingly been appropriated as a symbol of the controversial alt-right movement. Because of the use of Pepe by the alt-right, the Anti-Defamation League added Pepe the Frog to their database of hate symbols in 2016, adding that not all Pepe memes are racist.[3] Since then, Pepe's creator has publicly expressed his dismay at Pepe being used as a hate symbol.[4]
The meme's original use has evolved over time and has many variants, including Sad frog, Smug frog, Feels frog, and "You will never..." frog.[5]
Pepe the Frog was created by American artist Matt Furie. Its usage as a meme came from his comic, Boy's Club #1. The progenitor of Boy's Club was a zine that Furie made on Microsoft Paint called Playtime, which included Pepe as a character.[6] He posted his comic in a series of blog posts on Myspace in 2005.[5][7]
In the comic, Pepe was found urinating with his pants pulled down to his ankles and the catchphrase "feels good man" was his rationale.[8][9] Furie took those posts down when the printed edition was published in 2006.[5]
Pepe was used in blog posts on Myspace and became an in-joke on Gaia Online. In 2008, the page containing Pepe and the catchphrase was scanned and uploaded to 4chan's /b/ board, which was described by Motherboard as his "permanent home".[5] It took off among 4chan users, who adapted Pepe's face and the 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.[7][8] "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.[9]
"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.'"
Around 2015, as Pepe's usage was increasing, a phenomenon began on 4chan where users would declare certain variants as rare, known as a "rare Pepe". These images, sometimes as physical paintings,[10][11] were put up for sale and auction on eBay and posted in listings on Craigslist.[2][5] 4chan users referred to those who used the meme outside of the website as "normies" in response to the meme's increase in usage.[5] That year Pepe was #6 on Daily News and Analysis' list of the most important memes and was the most reblogged meme on Tumblr.[12][13]
During the 2016 United States presidential election, the meme was connected to the Donald Trump's campaign. In October 2015, Donald Trump retweeted a Pepe representation of himself, associated with a video called "You Can't Stump the Trump (Volume 4)".[3][14] 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 of 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.[15]
Also during the election, associations of the character with white nationalism and the alt-right were described by various news organizations.[16][17][18] In May 2016, Olivia Nuzzi of The Daily Beast wrote how 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.[19] In September 2016, an article published on Hillary Clinton's campaign website described Pepe as "a symbol associated with white supremacy" and denounced Donald Trump's campaign for its supposed promotion of the meme.[20][21] 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 lied in 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."[22] 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.[23][24] 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.[25][26]
In an interview with Esquire, Furie commented on Pepe's usage as a hate symbol, stating: "It sucks, but I can't control it more than anyone can control frogs on the Internet".[27]Fantagraphics Books, Furie's publisher, issued a statement condemning the "illegal and repulsive appropriations of the character".[28] On October 17, Furie published a satirical take of Pepe's appropriation to the alt-right movement on The Nib.[29][30] This was his first comic for the character since he ended Boy's Club in 2012.[1]
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Pepe the Frog - Wikipedia