Pepe the Meme King
A meme is a picture that is manipulated to poke fun at certain people and situations. Typically they are used in a non-harmful way and simply are used to have a laugh. As a person who grew up during the rise of meme culture, I have come across too many to count. Some people even create yearly meme calendars; they jot down which meme was most popular during the month. It was very difficult to choose a single meme to discuss and manipulate, but I had to choose the OG (in my opinion) meme: Pepe the Frog.
I found that it took a while for the Internet to uncover the origins of Pepe, but eventually the mystery of the frog was solved. According to Know Your Meme, Pepe is a character from a comic series known as Boy’s Club created by Matt Furie in 2005. The comic consists of Pepe as a teenager alongside his other friends; Furie displays their odd teenager lives with a few gags to appeal to older audiences. Pepe gained his popularity thru an array of websites such as 4chan, reddit, and tumblr; these being most commonly used by millennials. Users would add context to a picture to make it enjoyable whether it was a line of text, a photoshop edit of the image, or mixing it with other popular memes.
There are multiple variations of Pepe memes such as the sad Pepe, mischievous Pepe, angry Pepe, and so on. Since there are so many varieties, this meme can be used in a mixture of ways which makes it likeable to a large amount of people. Since there seems to be a Pepe for every mood one can experience, people often use Pepe as a way to express their feelings. An example of this is Katy Perry using a type of Pepe as a way to describe her feelings from lack of sleep after a flight from Australia.
All in all, meme are meant to enhance Internet humour and should not be taken seriously. Remember to be cautious on who is going to see your memes and how they may be affected. Here on the Internet, we are all here to have a good time!
