Pepe: The Tragic Story Of The Hijacking Of A Sad Little Frog

by Lord Shadowfire The Sarcastic

Pepe was a laid-back frog. His creator, Matt Furie, introduced him in a book called Boys' Club, about a group of 20 somethings who just wanted to feel good. So how did a frog who just wanted to be happy become an alt-right symbol of hate?
It wasn't easy.

For a long time, Pepe's appeal was universal. Matt Furie recognized that he had a hit on his hands, and promoted Pepe all over the internet. Beyond just a frog who wanted to feel good, Pepe became a friendly face to people with depression or anxiety, because they, too, just wanted to feel good, man.
Pepe was often bullied or made fun of for things he did, even though he never hurt anybody. In one comic, it was revealed that he pulled his pants all the way down to take a whiz. When directly asked, he didn't back down or make excuses, responding with his trademark catchphrase. That comic made him a mascot for the underdog, for those who were trampled underfoot by bullies.

Enter the alt-right.

As we all know, nobody has a bigger victim complex than those poor, oppressed white supremacists. They just don't understand why we don't want to hear what they have to say, and feel bullied and victimized when we stand up to them. So it's only natural that these professional victims would identify with Pepe, a guy who just wants to get by. And then somebody put a drawing on a cardboard sign:
It caught on. It went viral. Matt Furie couldn't have been happier... at first. Then somebody decided to draw a picture of Pepe as Donald Trump, because as we all know, Trump is the ultimate victim:
After that, white nationalists and white supremacists adopted him as their unofficial mascot, because they, too, just wanted to feel good, but they couldn't do that in a world where minorities were treated as equals:
But even then, Pepe might have survived, if it weren't for a key blunder in 2016. Hillary Clinton mistakenly identified him as a hate symbol.

Now, I'm certainly no Hillary basher, but surely it's a bad idea to take the word of an out-of-touch grandma about the meaning of an internet meme?

No? Just me? Oh well.

Naturally, after Hillary spoke on national TV, the news networks started picking it up. Everybody was talking about the new hate symbol, Pepe the frog. Matt Furie must have been pulling his hair out at this stage, because this was the last thing he wanted for his poor little froggy:
He tried so hard to reclaim his creation from the far right haters. But of course, haters gonna hate. The more he told them not to use his creation for hate speech, the more they did it. Because you can't reason with a bully, and racist bullies are the biggest bullies of all.

Matt tried valiantly to rehabilitate the image of his favorite character, creating a comic in which he walked away from a burning disaster area into a happy place with butterflies and rainbows:
But it did him no good. Racist pieces of garbage have no compassion for their victims, because they can't get out of that victim mentality themselves.

In 2017, Matt gave up the battle for his creation, and posted this cartoon, officially killing the character:
And so, Pepe the frog became the latest victim of the racist alt-right movement, because Matt Furie would rather see his character dead then in the hands of white supremacists.

But his story doesn't have to end there.

We can rehabilitate this poor little frog. Even death doesn't have to be the end for him:
Let's help Matt and his friend, Pepe, to turn a symbol of hate back into a symbol for good: