Pepe the Frog creator kills off internet meme

tay

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May 20, 2012
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co-opted by white supremacists

The creator of Pepe the Frog has symbolically killed off the cartoon frog, effectively surrendering control of the character to the far right.

Matt Furie, an artist and children’s book author, created the now-infamous frog as part of his “Boy’s Club” series on MySpace in 2005. Pepe took on a life of its own online as a meme, before being eventually adopted as a symbol by the “alt-right” in the lead-up to last year’s US election.

Furie launched a campaign to “Save Pepe”, flooding the internet with “peaceful or nice” depictions of the character in a bid to shake its association with white supremacy and antisemitism.

But he now seems to have conceded defeat, killing the character off in a one-page strip for the independent publisher Fantagraphics’ Free Comic Book Day. It showed Pepe laid to rest in an open casket, being mourned by his fellow characters from Boy’s Club.

Furie wrote in Time magazine last October that the experience of having his copyrighted creation appropriated as a hate symbol had been a “nightmare”.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...-internet-meme-co-opted-by-white-supremacists
 

Jinentonix

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Sep 6, 2015
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Just like the Nazis co-opted the swastika. Why do co-opters always win?
Well, in the case of the nazis, there probably weren't very many Hindus in Germany to complain about it.

By the same token, look at the anti-monument idiots in the Southern US. They have a problem with the Confederate flag because THEY say it's a symbol of racism and oppression. The flag doesn't represent those things. Those are ideas are associated to the flag by so-called progressives and therefore that's what the flag represents to them. Period. No one else's opinion matters.
Now they're going after the statuary and monuments that depict individuals that are inconvenient to US history or something. But here's the question, if those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it, how do you learn from it when half-wit morons are actively trying to erase it? These anti-monument morons are no better than the ISIS scum who go around destroying monuments and buildings of antiquity because they're "offensive" to their stupid, pin-headed beliefs.
 

tay

Hall of Fame Member
May 20, 2012
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Well, in the case of the nazis, there probably weren't very many Hindus in Germany to complain about it.

By the same token, look at the anti-monument idiots in the Southern US. They have a problem with the Confederate flag because THEY say it's a symbol of racism and oppression. The flag doesn't represent those things. Those are ideas are associated to the flag by so-called progressives and therefore that's what the flag represents to them. Period. No one else's opinion matters.
Now they're going after the statuary and monuments that depict individuals that are inconvenient to US history or something. But here's the question, if those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it, how do you learn from it when half-wit morons are actively trying to erase it? These anti-monument morons are no better than the ISIS scum who go around destroying monuments and buildings of antiquity because they're "offensive" to their stupid, pin-headed beliefs.

Well said but I think the creator of Pepe realizes his killing of him is symbolic as the Pepe fans will not understand that he's dead......