Wait is Pepe controversial? I always just interpreted it as an internet meme. One of the many faces of the internet
Yes, wikipedia, the gold standard of sources,even has its own section on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepe_the_Frog#Use_by_the_alt-right
There was a point where he was heavily embraced by internet nazis, and incels. He kinda became associated with them. The original creator tried to reclaim him and disavow all that, but the damage is done for alot of us.
No. Quit letting the far right edgelords do whatever they want with culture.
This ^. Fascists don’t deserve shit
not necessarily anymore, but it’s still popular mostly among nazis and chuds and its still a staple of 4chan culture.
its true that there was some movement to “take it back”, and it worked somewhat, but in practice i always double take when people use it because the aforementioned association is still going strong.
I consider it to be a popular dogwhistle for those who use hate speech. I don’t think it’s bigoted to use, but if I see someone using it I think they might be a bigot
By itself? No. The original character was not political, the community that made “feels bad man” famous as a meme wasn’t political, and many, many, many of the variants still around split off before it was seen as political. Even in the political sphere, there are plenty of left-wing variants too which I would not consider hate speech. A frogpost without context will make me examine someone closer for other clues, but it’s not inherently political or hateful.
No. Why would you let the nazis to appropriate anything they want?
Do a reverse uno card and go appropriate some of their shit. Like antifastonetoss. Take everything out of their hands.
No, and the original artist encourages people to pry him back from the bigots. Check out the documentary “Feels Good Man”
It’s a great doc. It was on PBS for a while.
Not on its own. If someone’s using it a lot and giving other hate signals, I’ll suspect that they know what they’re doing.
No
Only the people who use it as such.
No. Some time ago on Lemmy I had to explain the same thing to someone who was trying to make the claim that “glowie” was a racist term because it was used next to the N word in it’s first use by Terry A. Davis even though the context showed that “glowie” was being used as a derogatory term for members of the CIA and not people of color.
I had to explain that if someone used the F slur next to the word “rainbow” that does not make “rainbow” derogatory, and if it did, we would have a big problem with many, many more words.
The mistake people make here seems to be related to a composition/division logical fallacy in which they think that just because one thing is associated with another thing in specific context, the context of the second thing must be applied to the entirety of the first thing without exception, when this is not the case at all.
The exact same idea applies to Pepe. Pepe was not made as a hate symbol, but under some contexts has been used as one. This does not mean that Pepe is always a symbol of hate without exception.
no, they steal everything.
why do we keep letting them steal
‘free speech’ has always been about the freedom of the oppressed to fight upwards against their oppressor with language - but now they stole it & trying to make it mean their freedom to oppress minorities.
same for ‘woke’ - it used to mean basic human decency, once again they stole it & warped it’s meaning by pretending they’re the victims and it’s preventing their freedom (ie. their freedom to be a bigot).
same for ‘political correctness’, which was originally a criticism of using fake concern over moral issues for political agenda (sounds familiar), now warped beyond use.
swastika - used for THOUSANDS of years before the fucking nazis came along & stole it. now the cultures it actually belongs to get hate for practicing their ancient beliefs.
pepe and many others are a long list of things they steal and ruin.
why do we keep letting them steal?
they steal everything.
Absolutely. Nazis are consistently creatively bankrupt with few exceptions.
- Original party aesthetics: rebranded from DAP to NSDAP (against Hitler’s wishes) and adopted symbols to try and capitalize on the growing socialist movement after the failed German Revolution.
- Original party policies: A shallow syncretic mess. Even Mussolini thought they were morons.
- Neo-Nazi tactics: Also a syncretic mess, with tactics that contradict their own goals and abilities (e.g. copying black bloc, trying to adapt ex-military 1930s tactics to 2000s alienated teenagers).
- Aesthetics (both original and modern): Ignorant copypasting of ancient imagery (not-actually-Roman ‘roman salute’, neo-Roman architecture and statues, fake-Germanic runes)
- Nazi Pepe/Wojak edits: Both memes were already prominent from /r9k/ board.
- Fashwave: Vaporwave aesthetics copied without understanding what they represent and why they were interesting
why do we keep letting them steal?
Stealing is easy to do and takes effort to combat. There are things we’ve stopped them from co-opting, and plenty of contested symbols. But at the end of the day, when the mainstream media picks up a symbol and repeatedly assigns it to a group, it’s not so easy to overcome that in broader society.
No. It’s also part of internet culture. I know way too many decent people who use the meme. While it’s totally understandable to distance ourselves from a symbol if it becomes too poisoned by the far right, we also shouldn’t just allow them to claim things we like. That only gives them power they don’t deserve.
I know pepe didn’t start out that way, and I know the original creator has tried to reclaim him. But for far too long he was linked to internet nazi incel bs, and I can’t really get past it.
No it was just high jacked by the right just like they have currently high jacked soyboy wojack memes.
