Pepe the Frog's creator: 'Pepe is love'
It wasn't meant to be like this. Pepe the Frog, that smiling green amphibian that's been co-opted by white nationalists and officially deemed a hate symbol by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), was never supposed to be a mascot of hate.
Pepe started out life as a friendly, chilled frog, who maybe liked to get stoned and live a simple life - and his creator wants him back like that.
Writing in Time Thursday, Pepe's progenitor Matt Furie says he's reclaiming the creature from the dark corners of the internet in which he currently resides.
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Reminding readers that Pepe was "a blissfully stoned frog in my comic book Boy’s Club, where he enjoyed a simple life of snacks, soda and pulling his pants all the way down to go pee," Furie said the frog became a meme around 2008.
Users grabbed Pepe's "heavy-eyed, froggy face and the phrase 'feels good, man'" to describe how they felt after an event like passing an exam, Furie added.
So far, so benign. But then nothing on the internet remains the same forever.
Before long, Pepe was "used by haters on social media to suggest racist, anti-Semitic or other bigoted notions," the ADL said recently. He proliferated on 4chan, 8chan and Reddit, eventually spreading to Twitter and Facebook.
Perhaps a collision with Trump was inevitable, and the Republican candidate tweeted an image of himself as Pepe in October 2015. Money (albeit not much) is even being raised to install a Pepe-Trump billboard in the U.S.
Things have not been looking good for the frog. As Furie wrote Thursday, "it's completely insane that Pepe has been labeled a symbol of hate, and that racists and anti-Semites are using a once peaceful frog-dude from my comic book as an icon of hate."
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"It’s a nightmare, and the only thing I can do is see this as an opportunity to speak out against hate."
"In the end," however, Furie insisted "Pepe is whatever you say he is, and I, the creator, say that Pepe is love."
Tim Chester was Senior Editor, Real Time News in Los Angeles. Before that he was Deputy Editor of Mashable UK in London. Prior to joining Mashable, Tim was a Senior Web Editor at Penguin Random House, helping to relaunch the Rough Guides website and other travel brands. He was also a writer for Buzzfeed, GQ and The Sunday Times, covering everything from culture to tech and current affairs. Before that, he was Deputy Editor at NME.COM, overseeing content and development on the London-based music and entertainment site. Tim loves music and travel and has combined these two passions at festivals from Iceland to Malawi and beyond.
