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His death was both a filicide and a mercy killing. His creator Matt Furie, having seen the rudderless, soulless troll meme Pepe had become, illustrated him in an open casket in a one-page comic strip released in conjunction with Free Comic Book Day. Pepe was 12. Born as an innocent comics character in 2005, Pepe led a troubled life. He emerged as a favorite -- and mostly harmless -- meme of message boards and Internet wastrels in the 2010s, but his legacy took a hard downturn when he became an unholy experiment for far-right trolls during the 2016 election.

While it's nearly impossible to pin down a singular message from the political Pepes, the general feeling was one of trolling sadism and mischief. Remorseless social media users appropriated his image as Adolf Hitler, a Klansman and racist caricatures. Pepe was deployed again and again to represent beliefs that sometimes upset others, and he was often used to ridicule overly sensitive "snowflakes" or those with liberal or "social justice" views.

He also became closely tied with the self-identified "Deplorables," Donald Trump supporters who saw no reason to apologize for their views and in fact seemed to gain energy from others' hatred of them.

Even Trump himself re-tweeted a depiction of Pepe in 2015, though it was before the meme became closely associated with blatant nativism and xenophobia.

Isolated sections of message boards like 4chan and Reddit became hot crucibles of Pepe memery, bubbling forth with depictions both obscenely bigoted and benignly irritating.

Furie even launched a campaign to reclaim Pepe from hate groups. But it was too late.

Le Pen's image had been insinuated into countless Pepe memes, an extension of the creeping, unapologetic far-right ideology that Pepe had come to embody. In fact, many noted that "Pepe Le Pen" had a convenient cadence to it.

Hence, the problem with trolls. They're less like the monsters under a bridge and more like a hydra: One you lop off one head three more appear, and all of them look like something you once loved.

Original post:
Pepe, the sometimes-racist Internet frog, is dead - CNN.com