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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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 but I think it’s ugly as hell and I think that is a plenty good reason to want it to go away forever.
I feel like it’s one of those things that started on 4chan so yeah probably
I consider Pepe to be a picture. How the hell is it speech in any way?
I’m going to assume this question was asked in good faith. Speech is a synonym for expression. The written word is also not technically speech but is very much included in the term “Free Speech”.
Thanks. I can be a literal-minded idiot sometimes.
You’re being a bit hard on yourself. Words (and other things) change over time, misunderstanding things isn’t shameful, only failing to adapt to new information is.
Have a blessed Friday :)
Thanks, friend. You too!
No. Quit letting the far right edgelords do whatever they want with culture.
This ^. Fascists don’t deserve shit
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.
No
Only the people who use it as such.
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.
