好爽蛙(Feels Good Man)(EN)Subtitles

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1 00:00:58 I always first startwith the eyeball like this,
2 00:01:01 and you gotta leave a little bitof space there for the goo.
3 00:01:06 His little froggie eyelids.
4 00:01:10 That looks like sex partsa little bit.
5 00:01:15 I've just always beeninto drawing.
6 00:01:18 And it takes tons of timeto come up with a character
7 00:01:22 that you like enoughto draw over and over again.
8 00:01:27 It's just been kind ofa slow drip of frogs
9 00:01:30 throughout my entire life.
10 00:01:32 It's just one little frog after another,
11 00:01:35 after another, after another.
12 00:01:38 And then eventually,it was Pepe.
13 00:01:48 It's a happy little frog.
14 00:02:01 What do peopleget wrong about drawing Pepe?
15 00:02:04 Um...
16 00:02:07 Probably when they put Pepeon the Internet saying, like,
17 00:02:10 "Kill Jews."
18 00:02:16 Are you familiar with this memecalled Pepe the Frog?
19 00:02:21 Okay,so for those who don't,
20 00:02:22 here's the thing.Here's Pepe the Frog, okay?
21 00:02:27 Have you seen, you know,this frog meme?
22 00:02:29 Uh, forgot the name of it.
23 00:02:33 Many of you may rememberPepe the Frog who once...
24 00:02:38 ♪ I saw a man today
25 00:02:40 ♪ He led a big paradeDowntown ♪
26 00:02:44 ♪ And the doctor came
27 00:02:46 ♪ He stands asideTalking down ♪
28 00:02:48 ♪ Hey
29 00:02:49 ♪ It sounds like
30 00:02:51 I bet 90% of your viewershaven't heard of Pepe the Frog.
31 00:02:54 I thoughtit was a frog in a wig.
32 00:02:56 The whitesupremacist movement
33 00:02:58 has taken over Pepe the Frog!
34 00:03:00 ♪ 'Cause I've been really
35 00:03:02 ♪ I've been in love with you
36 00:03:29 ♪ I've been in love
37 00:03:32 ♪ With you
38 00:03:36 ♪ I've been in love
39 00:03:38 ♪ With you
40 00:04:02 We're herein the community thrift store,
41 00:04:04 and, uh, it all started here.
42 00:04:08 Ooh, let's see what's back here.
43 00:04:12 I do get, like,waves of nostalgia
44 00:04:15 for the youthful time in my 20s working here,
45 00:04:18 just hanging outwith my friends, and...
46 00:04:19 just riding a bikearound San Francisco.
47 00:04:22 So...
48 00:04:23 I basically just wantto be young again.
49 00:04:29 Guess what.
50 00:04:32 This is my oldoffice space here.
51 00:04:36 It used to bethe toy department.
52 00:04:40 This is where I spent my days.
53 00:04:42 -With...
54 00:04:44 That tickles.
55 00:04:46 ...guys like that.
56 00:04:51 I would have literallya mountain of toys every day,
57 00:04:54 and it was justreally inspiring.
58 00:04:57 It's like workinginside of a brain.
59 00:05:00 If I got caught up with my work, I would just draw.
60 00:05:03 Every day would be, like,new toys that would come in
61 00:05:05 and I would draw them, and so...
62 00:05:07 It was my ideal job situation.
63 00:05:12 Matt was always drawing that frog forever, I swear.
64 00:05:15 That was his go-to thingto draw,
65 00:05:17 so I've been seeingthat frog's face...
66 00:05:21 for as long as I've known Matt.
67 00:05:24 - Ew!
68 00:05:27 -Ew! Ew, ew, ew.-Excuse you.
69 00:05:31 I mean, the first timeI actually named him Pepe
70 00:05:32 was for this comics that I did called Playtime.
71 00:05:36 I was just messing aroundon Microsoft Paint
72 00:05:38 and came up with Pepe and Brett.
73 00:05:41 Two characters.
74 00:05:43 They did thingslike go to raves and paint.
75 00:05:48 It just kind ofnaturally developed.
76 00:05:52 And then I just thought
77 00:05:53 it would be funto have four characters,
78 00:05:54 kinda like the Ninja Turtles.
79 00:05:56 It became Boy's Club.
80 00:05:59 A lot of the humor is kind ofabout post-college zone.
81 00:06:03 You don't quite knowwhat you're doing,
82 00:06:05 but you like drinkingand hanging out.
83 00:06:08 The four characterswere just reflections
84 00:06:10 of my personality
85 00:06:11 and the personalityof my friends.
86 00:06:13 Landwolf, the party dog,
87 00:06:15 Andy was the jokesterof the group,
88 00:06:17 Brett liked to dance,
89 00:06:18 and then Pepe the Frogwas just kinda like
90 00:06:20 the little brother of the group.
91 00:06:26 The betterI got to know Matt,
92 00:06:29 the more, kind of, similarities I saw with him and Pepe.
93 00:06:34 Even the way Pepe looks,
94 00:06:36 like he kinda, like,looks like Matt a little bit.
95 00:06:42 Matt wasa little bit different
96 00:06:44 from what most peoplewould consider
97 00:06:47 a typical cartoonist.
98 00:06:50 I think it's more like this.
99 00:06:52 Mm-hmm.
100 00:06:54 Button down shirt, nerd glasses.
101 00:06:57 He seem like he was,like, a cool guy.
102 00:07:00 And Boy's Club,
103 00:07:01 it's oneof the funniest comics of,
104 00:07:03 I don't know,the last ten years.
105 00:07:05 What's happening here isLandwolf is passed out,
106 00:07:08 but that's like howhe passed out.
107 00:07:10 Like, he didn't quite make itonto the bed.
108 00:07:11 I don't know why,I thought he was trying
109 00:07:13 to jerk off and he passed out,like while he was...
110 00:07:15 Oh, I see.
111 00:07:17 Yeah.
112 00:07:18 I guess it's openfor interpretation, huh?
113 00:07:20 It is open for interpretation.
114 00:07:21 Landwolf, I thinkhe kind of represents
115 00:07:23 the kind of hairy,gross roommate
116 00:07:26 that you have sometimes.
117 00:07:28 Kinda cloggingthe drains.
118 00:07:29 It just made me think of our actual roommate, Chris.
119 00:07:33 Issues.
120 00:07:36 It's weird talkingabout these
121 00:07:37 because they're meant to be read in the privacy of your own home.
122 00:07:41 I never actually had to explainany of this shit.
123 00:07:46 I met Mattat a comics convention
124 00:07:48 where we're signingnext to each other.
125 00:07:50 I loved Matt's comics.
126 00:07:51 I grew up with an older brother
127 00:07:52 so I already hadthat sense of humor
128 00:07:54 where I liked, you know,boner jokes and barf and farts.
129 00:08:00 To me,it felt very accessible.
130 00:08:02 Like, it's the sortof masculinity
131 00:08:04 where you can bein your underwear
132 00:08:05 singing to Shania Twain.
133 00:08:07 ♪ Oh, oh, oh, go totally crazy
134 00:08:11 ♪ Forget I'm a lady
135 00:08:13 ♪ Men's shirts, short skirts
136 00:08:14 You know,when I watched Seinfeld,
137 00:08:16 I liked Kramer the best.
138 00:08:17 When I read Boy's Club,I liked Landwolf the best.
139 00:08:20 I guess Pepe's kind of more of an Elaine.
140 00:08:22 -I mean...
141 00:08:24 Elaine is great,but, uh...
142 00:08:26 But yeah, if Elaine had becomea symbol of the alt-right...
143 00:08:29 I would be like,
144 00:08:31 "Yeah, that's crazy.That shouldn't be the case."
145 00:08:35 It seems incredibly random.
146 00:08:37 People are like,
147 00:08:39 "This is the characterwe're going to use
148 00:08:41 for the Internet."
149 00:08:42 Like, "This is going to bethe mascot for the Internet."
150 00:08:51 One day, he was doingBoy's Club comics
151 00:08:55 at my house.
152 00:08:57 I remember I was sitting on Aiyana's little love seat
153 00:09:00 in her tiny ass apartment.
154 00:09:02 He said...
155 00:09:03 "Can you...
156 00:09:05 stand over thereand bend over and,
157 00:09:08 and kind of make it look likeyou're pulling your pants down
158 00:09:11 while you're bending overso I can draw you?"
159 00:09:13 You know,toilets are hard to draw.
160 00:09:16 People pulling down their pantsis hard to draw.
161 00:09:18 So I kind of hunched over
162 00:09:20 and pretendedlike I was pulling my pants down
163 00:09:22 and he drew a little sketch.
164 00:09:25 It ended up being Pepe.
165 00:09:28 So, that was my butt.
166 00:09:32 And my toilet.
167 00:09:33 -Ahh!
168 00:09:37 So is Pepe's bodybased on Aiyana?
169 00:09:43 Whatever kind of weird stuff
170 00:09:45 kinda stuck with mein childhood,
171 00:09:47 sometimes it ends upin Boy's Club, like...
172 00:09:49 I remember when I wasin second grade
173 00:09:52 and I went to the bathroomalongside my cousin David.
174 00:09:56 And he pulled his pantsall the way down to go pee.
175 00:09:58 Underwear and everything.
176 00:10:01 It seemslike it would feel really good
177 00:10:04 so I wanted to make a comicabout that.
178 00:10:07 Feels good, man.
179 00:10:11 That wasthe frame that...
180 00:10:13 ...started it all.
181 00:10:26 I just thoughtit was cool
182 00:10:27 that I could just draw a comic,
183 00:10:28 scan it inand put it on MySpace,
184 00:10:31 and then peoplewould see it instantly.
185 00:10:38 Back then, it was kind ofnewer territory and...
186 00:10:41 and I liked the vibeof MySpace a lot.
187 00:10:43 It was like,um, you were inside
188 00:10:44 somebody's locker roomor something.
189 00:10:52 At the time, I had some friendsthat, like, were into exercise.
190 00:10:56 And they found it online, like a before and after shot.
191 00:11:00 It would say, "Feels good, man."
192 00:11:03 I thought it was really weird.
193 00:11:04 A lot of weight lifters would be, like,
194 00:11:06 "Oh, I just finisheda great workout.
195 00:11:08 Feels good, man."
196 00:11:11 And I rememberjust thinking, like,
197 00:11:13 "Oh, that can't bebecause of Pepe."
198 00:11:15 You know, it's just some random accident.
199 00:11:19 The catch phrase,"Feels good, man,"
200 00:11:21 started becoming more popular.
201 00:11:24 It would be a photoof a cat or something
202 00:11:26 and it would say,"Feels good, man."
203 00:11:28 Or there was one version of itthat said, "Feels Goodman,"
204 00:11:32 with John Goodman's face.
205 00:11:33 It was pretty funny at the time.
206 00:11:41 When I would checkmy email,
207 00:11:43 every so often,somebody would send me a link
208 00:11:46 to a Pepe being in some kindof weird chat room
209 00:11:49 or something like that.
210 00:11:50 I remember specifically,
211 00:11:52 my dad sent me a linkto this kid
212 00:11:54 who made a Pepe song.
213 00:11:55 ♪ Hey, Pepe
214 00:11:57 ♪ I heard you pullYour pants down ♪
215 00:11:58 ♪ All the way to go pee
216 00:12:00 - ♪ Could you show me?- ♪ Feels good, man
217 00:12:03 ♪ Feels good, man
218 00:12:05 And it was likethis big nerdy thing.
219 00:12:08 I was, like,kind of interested in it
220 00:12:11 as an Internet phenomenon,
221 00:12:13 but I didn't really thinktoo much about it.
222 00:12:15 I was just like,ha ha, whatever.
223 00:12:17 When it startedto snowball...
224 00:12:21 and Matt didn't seem to mind,I was a little, like...
225 00:12:24 "Well. I mean, that's weird."
226 00:12:27 I said,"Sue them. Lawyer up."
227 00:12:30 Man, I'm like an artist
228 00:12:32 so I don't like suingother artists.
229 00:12:34 He's kind of just like, "Oh, yeah, man.
230 00:12:36 Just let them dowhat they want."
231 00:12:38 Using Pepe as a meme.That's cool, you know.
232 00:12:41 "Meme."
233 00:12:42 I didn't even knowwhat a meme was
234 00:12:44 or I don't even still knowif I'm saying that correctly,
235 00:12:47 but it was through Pepethat I learned what a meme was.
236 00:13:04 It's hard to remember what I first thought
237 00:13:06 when I saw Pepe the Frog.
238 00:13:07 But I thinkI kind of imagined, like,
239 00:13:09 in my student days,these guys hanging out with a...
240 00:13:13 a spliff and having a nice time.
241 00:13:15 And he was just rathersort of hopeless and sweet
242 00:13:18 and I just thought, "Aw, mm."
243 00:13:21 Chick, chick, chick!
244 00:13:22 Chickens, come on!
245 00:13:23 The whole ideaof memes comes from
246 00:13:25 Richard Dawkins' 1976 book,The Selfish Gene.
247 00:13:29 Most of the book is about
248 00:13:30 what he called"Universal Darwinism,"
249 00:13:33 which said all of biologyis driven by genes,
250 00:13:36 but culture is driven by memes.
251 00:13:40 He said, look around you
252 00:13:42 and you'll see floating aboutin the primeval soup of culture
253 00:13:46 is informationcopied by imitation
254 00:13:48 from person to person.
255 00:13:50 So that would include chairs,
256 00:13:52 trousers,
257 00:13:54 hairstyles.
258 00:13:56 All of these thingsare only here
259 00:13:58 because humans have copied them
260 00:14:00 and the ones around usare the winners
261 00:14:02 in an evolutionary battle.
262 00:14:04 And then, gradually camethe concept of Internet memes.
263 00:14:09 And people can easily see
264 00:14:12 that process happening...
265 00:14:13 with Pepe.
266 00:14:20 Pepe is a wonderful exampleof a meme
267 00:14:22 that escaped out thereinto the memosphere
268 00:14:26 and suffered all the thingsyou'd expect of a meme.
269 00:14:33 Pepe,it's just folds upon folds.
270 00:14:35 Um...
271 00:14:37 The Pepe techniqueis to draw too many lines.
272 00:14:41 There's another foldand then another fold.
273 00:14:44 And, like, these...these, like, lumps.
274 00:14:47 And he looks really cracked out,but that's the idea.
275 00:14:50 It's like steeringinto that mistake.
276 00:14:53 He also symbolizessteering into the mistake
277 00:14:55 of stayingin your mom's basement.
278 00:15:00 I saw Boy's Clubaround 2007 or so,
279 00:15:03 kind of whenhe was first posting it
280 00:15:04 on the Internet.
281 00:15:06 Then it just kept appearingin message boards.
282 00:15:09 "Feels good, man."
283 00:15:12 In that little story,
284 00:15:14 he's owning the factthat he's this weird guy.
285 00:15:17 That moment of owningyour loserdom,
286 00:15:19 like owning your weirdness,right? It's like...
287 00:15:21 perfect 4chan ethics.
288 00:15:27 Christopher Poole.
289 00:15:29 He was 14 years old,living with his mom,
290 00:15:32 spending all his time indoors,on the Internet, and...
291 00:15:36 He created this crazy monsterin his basement.
292 00:15:39 Now, over7 million people are using it,
293 00:15:41 contributing over 700,000 posts per day.
294 00:15:44 And we've gonefrom 1 board to 48 boards.
295 00:15:52 So 4chan,just the way that it functioned,
296 00:15:54 was super conduciveto creating memes.
297 00:15:58 The way 4chan worksis that
298 00:16:00 it's a Darwinian competitionfor attention.
299 00:16:02 So you have a post.
300 00:16:04 And if the post getsa lot of replies,
301 00:16:06 it floats to the top.
302 00:16:08 And if no one replies,it sinks to the bottom
303 00:16:10 and quickly dies.
304 00:16:12 It's a winningand losing system.
305 00:16:14 And it's a lot likea video game.
306 00:16:17 There were all theseadolescent boys
307 00:16:18 trying to own each otherin the competition.
308 00:16:22 -And so it became this...
309 00:16:23 ...culture of sayingthe most offensive thing.
310 00:16:28 And so, like, Pepe kind of melts into that community.
311 00:16:33 And all of the stuffthat just exploded
312 00:16:34 out of the culturefour or five years later
313 00:16:36 were being invented thereby all these clever people
314 00:16:39 and they were all anonymous.
315 00:16:53 On 4chan, you're talking to another text box
316 00:16:57 so you're free to expressthose kind of secret ideas
317 00:16:59 that people have
318 00:17:01 that they don't feel comfortable expressing in real life.
319 00:17:07 I posted Pepes all the time.
320 00:17:10 To not post Pepewould be strange
321 00:17:12 because it's just...It's the meme.
322 00:17:16 Post, send. Boom.
323 00:17:18 So there I amright there.
324 00:17:20 It's hard to say why Pepegained popularity so fast.
325 00:17:24 You could say it was justan easily relatable image.
326 00:17:28 I have my own collection. I have my reaction image folder
327 00:17:31 filled with Pepeand all the derivatives.
328 00:17:36 The term was like,"We feel alone together."
329 00:17:39 Um, that was their idea.
330 00:17:43 As it ages,it just gets more desperate.
331 00:17:47 They would describe themselvesas NEET.
332 00:17:50 NEET stands for Not in Education Employment or Training.
333 00:17:54 The idea was thatthey were trying to find a word
334 00:17:57 that described their situation,
335 00:17:59 for these sort of, like,masses of kids
336 00:18:02 who are just unemployed or justkind of dropped out of life.
337 00:18:04 I think the best thing would beto start with a job.
338 00:18:07 -No. No!- Yeah, absolutely.
339 00:18:09 She needs a job.
340 00:18:10 No!
341 00:18:14 So 4chan really comesto embody that culture
342 00:18:17 of checking out and livingin your mom's basement.
343 00:18:27 It started in 2003and still exists.
344 00:18:29 So imagine peoplebeing on there ten years,
345 00:18:32 like it becoming a lifestyle.
346 00:18:53 A lot of people are talkingthat they have
347 00:18:54 super hot basement layerswhere they get to NEET it up.
348 00:18:57 Well, I mean, basically,nobody's really touching my game
349 00:18:59 right now, you know? So...
350 00:19:01 Got the Primo couch bed
351 00:19:04 and I just kick this shitall over the place
352 00:19:06 because I just don't give a fuckabout anything.
353 00:19:07 And, uh...
354 00:19:09 It's... it's a life.
355 00:19:14 I think I probably sawimages of Pepe first
356 00:19:16 on the fitness board of 4chan.
357 00:19:19 You know,this frog was so prevalent.
358 00:19:25 What does Pepe mean to me?
359 00:19:28 What does he mean to me?
360 00:19:32 He's a frog.
361 00:19:36 He's a sad frog.
362 00:19:39 Sad frog.
363 00:19:41 Now on 4chan,the quote-unquote sad frog
364 00:19:44 became the most popular imagefor displaying sadness.
365 00:19:49 There were other images thatwould describe that feeling.
366 00:19:52 You have thingslike a picture of Keanu Reeves
367 00:19:55 sitting on a bench.
368 00:19:57 But maybehe's just deep in thought.
369 00:20:01 That sad frog.You knew what it was about.
370 00:20:04 Nothing else neededto be said there.
371 00:20:07 Pepe the sad frog.
372 00:20:11 Pepe.
373 00:20:12 Pepe what?
374 00:20:13 -The sad frog.- The sad frog?
375 00:20:15 -Pepe the sad frog.- What's that?
376 00:20:18 You know, it wasn't somethingthat's really circulated heavily
377 00:20:20 on, like, Facebook
378 00:20:22 or any of that stuffat the time.
379 00:20:23 Pepe just kinda feltlike uniquely 4chan.
380 00:20:27 Feels bad man.
381 00:20:28 I didn't knowabout the Boy's Club comic
382 00:20:30 or anything like that.
383 00:20:31 I did not knowwho Matt Furie was.
384 00:20:33 Even afterI learned about Boy's Club,
385 00:20:36 I was like, "Oh, they're making a Pepe comic.
386 00:20:38 Oh, that's cool."
387 00:21:11 That's the story, um...
388 00:21:13 It's aboutsomewhere in the future.
389 00:21:15 The mutants have taken overand they make new children.
390 00:21:19 I like this style of gun.
391 00:21:22 Are you, uh...
392 00:21:25 actually the guy that made...
393 00:21:27 -that made Pepe? Yeah.-Yeah, yeah.
394 00:21:30 But it must suck for youthat it, uh...
395 00:21:33 That he has become, uh,
396 00:21:35 that he become hijacked by...by 4chan.
397 00:21:37 I mean, it definitely sucks,but, nothing's forever, right?
398 00:21:44 I'm just a spectatorto how things
399 00:21:46 kinda mutate and evolveon the Internet.
400 00:21:50 You kinda see everythingas some big joke,
401 00:21:53 but it's like kind of a window into this kinda like dark place.
402 00:22:00 I'll draw youa little Pepe.
403 00:22:03 People on the Internethave their own characters
404 00:22:05 that Pepe was interacting with.
405 00:22:07 There's one wherehe's interacting with this guy.
406 00:22:09 I think his name is Wojack.
407 00:22:13 I would see pictures of Pepe,
408 00:22:15 like, hugging this stark whitesad looking guy.
409 00:22:20 And I was like, "What is that?"
410 00:22:24 They call him, you know,The Feels Guy or...
411 00:22:26 Wojack is the proper term.
412 00:22:31 He was for expressingan unpleasant feeling.
413 00:22:35 I'd be sitting thereand kinda be tense from anxiety
414 00:22:37 kind of, like...
415 00:22:38 You know, and being...like that.
416 00:22:40 And I go on the board,I'd be like, "Okay.
417 00:22:41 These are my people."
418 00:22:44 We're all over the world but we all have
419 00:22:46 these feelings of anxietyand everything together
420 00:22:48 and it's like a group therapyon the Internet.
421 00:22:52 Even when I was at work,we had these security cameras.
422 00:22:54 I would duck behind,like, a stack of crates
423 00:22:56 and quick to be, like,"You dumb idiots."
424 00:22:59 Then I'd check,like, 10-15 minutes later,
425 00:23:01 you know, to seewho's replying to me,
426 00:23:03 and I would face an onslaughtof people just saying
427 00:23:06 I was the mosthideous man alive.
428 00:23:08 I would, you know, wear that as a badge of honor.
429 00:23:10 I'd be like,"Yes. I'm a true 4chan guy.
430 00:23:12 I'm a true social reject.I'm a true freak.
431 00:23:16 Yeah, you're darn tooting."
432 00:23:23 I'm a latecomer to Pepe.
433 00:23:25 Uh, probably becausehe's not my type.
434 00:23:29 I came to Pepeafter he had gone dark.
435 00:23:35 Pepe is a sad frog.
436 00:23:37 He's never happy.He's just sort of miserable.
437 00:23:45 And I think,for a huge population,
438 00:23:48 online and offline,we're not really allowed
439 00:23:51 to express sorrowor sadness or grief.
440 00:23:54 And this sad little frogarrives online
441 00:23:57 in the midst of the pushto commodify the Internet.
442 00:24:03 What was going onat that point
443 00:24:05 was that everybodywas super damn positive.
444 00:24:07 The people were suddenly ableto make cash money
445 00:24:11 out of their image
446 00:24:12 which meant that they had to be, like, totally rad,
447 00:24:15 happy, fitspo,my best-self thing.
448 00:24:19 And in drops Pepe...ripe for the taking.
449 00:24:23 Hey, guys. It's me, Lily.
450 00:24:27 Today I'm going to be doinga Pepe transformation.
451 00:24:35 Pepe starts to percolateinto another population.
452 00:24:38 We've got a lot more women,a lot more girls.
453 00:24:42 They were sharingtheir own Pepe.
454 00:24:45 Hey, guys. I just googledwhat a meme was
455 00:24:47 and I think I'm in lovewith memes!
456 00:24:51 Pepe... is the best.
457 00:24:54 You draw the head,
458 00:24:57 which is just like a butt.
459 00:25:01 Things begin to spiralreally out of control.
460 00:25:04 A couple of celebrities,Nicki Minaj and Katy Perry,
461 00:25:09 they had posted on Instagrama couple of Pepe images.
462 00:25:19 A lot of people see it for the first time.
463 00:25:20 They wonder, "Who is this frog?
464 00:25:21 What is this frog?What is this?"
465 00:25:23 I want to seesome more of that.
466 00:25:25 They start making, like,a migration over to 4chan.
467 00:25:29 Young womenin particular,
468 00:25:31 downloading Pepe images , using them for their own likes.
469 00:25:35 And that was seen as...
470 00:25:37 despicable.
471 00:25:38 I love Pepe so much.
472 00:25:40 The true Pepe is this Pepe.
473 00:25:42 Pepe has green skin. It's so beautiful.
474 00:25:45 It's different from frog.
475 00:25:46 Pepe green is special green.
476 00:25:51 It seemed to me,like, invasion.
477 00:25:53 You had peoplethat would come on and say,
478 00:25:55 "Why are all youvirgin losers here?"
479 00:25:57 You know,"Where's the Pepe pictures at?
480 00:25:58 Where are they at?"
481 00:25:59 I strive to be Pepe.
482 00:26:03 Just kidding.
483 00:26:05 I hate Pepe the Frog.
484 00:26:08 Pe... whatever his name is.
485 00:26:10 Peep, Pepe.
486 00:26:11 Either way, he's stupid.
487 00:26:14 And I don't really knowwhy I made my face green
488 00:26:18 to prove the pointthat I hate Pepe.
489 00:26:20 But let me prove it by saying,
490 00:26:23 "I hate you, Pepe."
491 00:26:24 I'm going to chop your head off.
492 00:26:26 Your little...
493 00:26:27 Your little froggie head offlike this.
494 00:26:31 It was seriousto a lot of people, like,
495 00:26:33 "This is the symbolof our culture."
496 00:26:37 And it really was turning into a total Pepe Fest.
497 00:26:53 Ooh, nice.
498 00:26:56 Pepe was just really turning into a thing and, um...
499 00:26:59 my buddy Skinner was, like,
500 00:27:01 "Hey you should doa clothing line."
501 00:27:12 Yeah, it was just kinda funnyto make something official
502 00:27:15 out of something that's so,kind of, like...
503 00:27:18 bootlegged on the Internet.
504 00:27:22 I drew all these...
505 00:27:24 goofy-ass Pepesthat were kinda based on...
506 00:27:27 just whatever random nonsensewas out there on the Internet.
507 00:27:30 I like this onewith the little cigarette.
508 00:27:33 This one'sparticularly weird.
509 00:27:35 And this one is just...
510 00:27:38 I like that. That's avery stripped down Pepe.
511 00:27:41 The sad frog golf shirt.
512 00:27:44 You can havea pasta meal with your family
513 00:27:46 wearing this one.
514 00:27:50 Pepe was, like, a famous meme.
515 00:27:53 And my friend, Jay,he got a tattoo gun.
516 00:27:56 He just had it set upin his kitchen.
517 00:27:58 And so one night,
518 00:28:00 I think it was justcompletely spontaneous.
519 00:28:02 We're just like,"Oh, let's get Pepe tattoos."
520 00:28:05 It's like very little thoughtgoes into this at all, you know.
521 00:28:11 We just thoughtit was funny
522 00:28:12 to have a Pepe tattoo
523 00:28:13 and Matt was thereso it was like a tribute
524 00:28:15 to my friend.
525 00:28:17 I didn't know at the time
526 00:28:18 but I got it, like,below my sleeve here.
527 00:28:21 That would kind of, uh,come back to bite me.
528 00:28:25 As the Pepe defense was building
529 00:28:28 to try and steer people awayfrom using Pepe
530 00:28:31 for their own, you know,normie usage...
531 00:28:34 that spawned a lot of angry,raging Pepes.
532 00:28:39 But then,that fateful day occurred
533 00:28:41 where there was a YouTube videoof screaming frogs.
534 00:28:46 Say somethingfor the camera.
535 00:28:48 Look at the thing blow uplike a balloon.
536 00:29:00 They havea high pitched scream
537 00:29:02 which sounded a lot like...
538 00:29:10 And it becamelike this battle cry.
539 00:29:18 There would be somebody who would be coming in
540 00:29:19 from Instagram.
541 00:29:22 Sort of out themselves,maybe a sex-haver
542 00:29:24 or a woman.
543 00:29:26 A neurotypical,socially well-adjusted person.
544 00:29:30 Once you kinda get that seedplanted in the head of, like,
545 00:29:33 you know, the popular kidsand look...
546 00:29:35 look how they're living,
547 00:29:37 then look at you, you know.You're this...
548 00:29:38 You're this... slug.
549 00:29:40 All you normieshave been bullying us
550 00:29:42 our whole lives.
551 00:29:43 I'll never be one of youdisgusting normies.
552 00:29:45 Fuck... normies.
553 00:30:01 You know, these were a groupof disempowered men
554 00:30:04 who had retreatedinto fantasy worlds.
555 00:30:07 That was their last place of retreat, in a sense.
556 00:30:10 And so, having women therewas what they didn't want
557 00:30:14 because that was a symbolof their defeat in real life.
558 00:30:26 Ursula.
559 00:30:28 Hey.
560 00:30:29 -Is that Twilight Sparkle?-Mm-hmm!
561 00:30:32 -Is that her name?-Yeah!
562 00:30:34 She's like,"Ursula, I'm going to help you."
563 00:30:37 Aw!
564 00:30:39 -Okay.-That's so cute.
565 00:30:41 That one says,"A pocket mouse sleeps...
566 00:30:44 -safely it in its nest."-That's so cute.
567 00:30:46 -It's a little mouse.-Oh.
568 00:30:50 People would just email me
569 00:30:52 fucked up pictures of Pepe
570 00:30:55 and it didn't really shock me.
571 00:30:57 I'd be more shocked by,you know, people actually...
572 00:31:00 expressing some formof cuteness or love
573 00:31:03 like this other stuff is just...It's just garbage.
574 00:31:08 I think the weird thing
575 00:31:10 about American culturein general is, like,
576 00:31:12 we do kinda celebrate garbage
577 00:31:14 and we also produce a hellof a lot of physical garbage.
578 00:31:17 So it's just like...
579 00:31:19 fucking garbage world.
580 00:31:32 I was definitely conscious
581 00:31:33 of not wanting to be remembered
582 00:31:35 as the artist that didBoy's Club.
583 00:31:37 So I just wantedto keep doing other stuff.
584 00:31:41 There's no connectionbetween this frog and Pepe
585 00:31:43 other than they kinda looklike one another.
586 00:31:46 But this is just another frogin a different place.
587 00:31:52 I decided to doa whole kids book
588 00:31:54 that was totally wordless.
589 00:31:57 It follows the life of this frogand his pet rat...
590 00:32:01 living ina little mushroom house.
591 00:32:02 They travel on the backof a bike.
592 00:32:07 They wake up at nighttime and go exploring.
593 00:32:10 Okay, look at me.
594 00:32:12 Through the forest
595 00:32:14 then they end upsurfing on some dolphins,
596 00:32:17 and swimmingand going underground.
597 00:32:19 I just really went
598 00:32:21 for the childlike wonderwith this one.
599 00:32:34 The Night Riders.
600 00:32:35 It's a work of highly skilled craftsmanship.
601 00:32:39 It took him almost a yearto make it.
602 00:32:42 I told him, you know,I saw that he had that in him.
603 00:32:44 He had aWhere the Wild Things Are
604 00:32:46 in him, I just knew it.
605 00:32:48 We were working onThe Night Riders
606 00:32:50 before all this insanePepe stuff started to happen.
607 00:32:53 Pepe's really justthe tip of the iceberg
608 00:32:55 for the kind of artthat Matt's capable of making.
609 00:33:00 How come the dragondoesn't have wings?
610 00:33:02 It's more ofa land dragon,
611 00:33:04 than a dragon of the airor a dragon of the sea.
612 00:33:06 So he's... He's a land dragon.
613 00:33:10 The charactersare of different species,
614 00:33:12 but they seem like friendsfrom the neighborhood.
615 00:33:15 We can tell they love each other
616 00:33:16 and the book is built toward
617 00:33:19 a bunch of nocturnal animalsexperiencing a sunrise.
618 00:33:28 The end.
619 00:33:36 Pepe had escapedand he was roaming around.
620 00:33:40 And, like,it was fun for a while.
621 00:33:42 Um, until, uh...
622 00:33:45 ...it wasn't anymore.
623 00:33:48 And on 4chan...
624 00:33:50 whenever they thought
625 00:33:51 quote-unquote normies,sort of outsiders or other sites
626 00:33:54 were stealing their memes,
627 00:33:55 they would try to make themas offensive as possible.
628 00:33:58 It's like a classicpunk response.
629 00:34:01 Literally armoredlike a punk, right?
630 00:34:03 And they're like,"It's so offensive, I...
631 00:34:04 It can't be co-opted."
632 00:34:08 So they put him next to the Trade Towers disintegrating.
633 00:34:11 They put swastikas all over him and Nazified Pepe.
634 00:34:15 And it sort of snowballs.
635 00:34:17 Back then, it was just the most offensive thing you could do.
636 00:34:20 But it now readsas a weird prologue
637 00:34:22 to when the ironykind of melted away.
638 00:34:27 There are peopleon these platforms who believe
639 00:34:30 that because you've couchedyour intention in a joke,
640 00:34:33 that you can disavow itwhen people come asking.
641 00:34:35 That's right.That's exactly right.
642 00:34:37 So you create this ambiguityso there's no way for you
643 00:34:39 to meanwhat you really mean ever.
644 00:34:41 Yeah.
645 00:34:43 I think what's appealingabout Pepe
646 00:34:45 is that he combinesthis impossible mixture
647 00:34:48 of innocence and evil.
648 00:34:50 Like he has this kindof knowing smile
649 00:34:53 while he's performing actsthat are really atrocious.
650 00:34:56 It sort of fulfills the idea
651 00:34:58 that we can saythese terrible things
652 00:35:01 and just mean them as jokesall the time.
653 00:35:04 They're always just jokesall the time
654 00:35:06 and you can't prove otherwise.
655 00:35:08 We're just a bunchof kids in our underwear.
656 00:35:10 It's harmless.No one really means it.
657 00:35:13 The problem, I think, is thatit's really demonstrable
658 00:35:16 in the worst casesthat this isn't funny.
659 00:35:20 You know, it's not funnywhen people die.
660 00:35:23 CPR in progress.
661 00:35:25 Okay, we gotanother gunshot victim at...
662 00:35:27 Shots fired! Shots fired!
663 00:35:29 A black car pulls up and stops
664 00:35:32 and he rolls down the window...
665 00:35:33 I just saw four gunshots.
666 00:35:34 A Friday night rampage
667 00:35:36 in this bustling college town
668 00:35:38 after two gun battleswith police and a chase,
669 00:35:41 seven people were dead.
670 00:35:42 Twenty-two year oldElliott Rodger
671 00:35:44 believed to be the gunman.
672 00:35:45 Tonight investigators arepouring over videos
673 00:35:47 Rodger posted online.
674 00:35:49 There was sort of this intense
675 00:35:51 pain that you could seewhere he was
676 00:35:53 really divorced from reality.
677 00:35:54 Like he didthe shooting spree in a car,
678 00:35:57 a fancy car his parentshad bought for him
679 00:35:59 to boost his confidence.
680 00:36:01 He didn't evenmake an effort.
681 00:36:02 Didn't talk to anybody.And he was so closed off
682 00:36:05 and it was like when he wassitting there,
683 00:36:07 you can just tell he's justthinking these thoughts
684 00:36:09 in his head the entire time.He's just talking to himself.
685 00:36:14 I came onto 4chan that day.
686 00:36:17 People in this environmentwere starting to get whipped up
687 00:36:19 and they're like,"Yeah, that's right.
688 00:36:21 You showed him who's boss."
689 00:36:22 You know, he, he went out there.
690 00:36:23 He stood up for being,you know, the virgin with rage.
691 00:36:27 The very first pictureof Elliott Rodger that I saved
692 00:36:30 was a picture of this sort of
693 00:36:32 semi-transparent sobbing woman,
694 00:36:35 and then like threeor four Pepes with guns.
695 00:36:38 It was like oneof the very first ones
696 00:36:39 that like took Elliottand put it into like a,
697 00:36:42 sort of like a context.
698 00:36:43 People starteddrawing Pepes
699 00:36:45 riding around in BMWswith Elliot Rodger.
700 00:36:48 Yeah, I kind of get a little bit energized by it, you know.
701 00:36:50 And it was kind of this, like,
702 00:36:52 maybe society does needto get flipped on its head.
703 00:37:04 Hi, Elliot Rodger.
704 00:37:08 I don'tcondone violence, you know.
705 00:37:10 I'm not a violence condoner.
706 00:37:11 But, he set me off into the path
707 00:37:14 that made me who I am today,
708 00:37:16 and I have to acknowledge that.
709 00:37:24 On 4chan, you see somethingtotally new called the...
710 00:37:28 uh, Beta Male Uprising,
711 00:37:30 the Beta Uprising.
712 00:37:32 - -The idea would be that,
713 00:37:34 all of them would
714 00:37:36 run out of their mom's basements
715 00:37:37 and start shooting people.
716 00:37:42 And of course, like, it's a wayof making fun of themselves.
717 00:37:45 It's always codedin guarded irony.
718 00:37:47 But of course, behind the ironyis the seriousness.
719 00:37:49 Why are you talking about that?
720 00:37:51 It's because that's an issuethat resonates with you.
721 00:37:54 Uprise.
722 00:37:55 Welcome to your demise.
723 00:37:58 Pepethen becomes the symbol.
724 00:37:59 You see him holding the gun.
725 00:38:01 It's the classic responsefrom 4chan,
726 00:38:03 which is likethe most nihilistic
727 00:38:05 and despairing, cynical right
728 00:38:07 where anyone wantsto kill themselves
729 00:38:08 or do something awful,or do something anti-social,
730 00:38:11 making that screen illusionreal in some way.
731 00:38:14 Um, they're like,"Yeah. Go for it."
732 00:38:16 Philadelphia area colleges
733 00:38:18 have all warned studentsto be extra cautious tomorrow
734 00:38:21 This is the threat that wasposted on 4chan,
735 00:38:24 a message boardwhere everyone is anonymous.
736 00:38:27 It was posted last Friday,
737 00:38:28 the day afterthe shooting in Oregon.
738 00:38:31 It phrases the gunman
739 00:38:32 as a fellow member ofthe Beta Rebellion.
740 00:38:35 The post on 4chan
741 00:38:36 uses a profile pictureof what appears to be
742 00:38:38 the Grinch in a mask,holding a gun.
743 00:38:41 That same picturewas used in a post
744 00:38:43 the day beforethe Oregon massacre.
745 00:38:47 You see, it's not just
746 00:38:48 the memes generate the violence.
747 00:38:50 It's that the violencebecomes a meme.
748 00:38:53 But, it's just a joke.
749 00:38:55 Right? It's just a stupid frog.
750 00:39:00 If you had hada victory over the normies,
751 00:39:03 you know, striking backat the oppressors,
752 00:39:05 it was seen as too enthusiasticto post like a big, you know...
753 00:39:09 grinning, laughing,you know, ha-ha-ha.
754 00:39:13 So when this smug Pepe came out,it was groundbreaking.
755 00:39:17 Like in a way that ismaybe hard to explain.
756 00:39:21 It was the most succinct,
757 00:39:24 perfect face.
758 00:39:26 Then the, uh, you know,the, the hand up.
759 00:39:28 It had the perfect
760 00:39:30 silly look to it.
761 00:39:32 You know, crude...
762 00:39:34 like holding back laughter,
763 00:39:36 but enjoying the sufferingof others.
764 00:39:39 It was like the perfecttrolling accessory.
765 00:39:43 The way he's redrawn
766 00:39:44 with his like thumb up likethis, like really smug...
767 00:39:47 - Yeah.-It's like...
768 00:39:49 that tone is so ugly.
769 00:39:53 It's used to imply like...
770 00:39:56 being above
771 00:39:57 a conversation that peopleare trying to have
772 00:39:59 about kindness.
773 00:40:07 Trump was sort of seenas like the personification
774 00:40:10 of the smug Pepe meme.
775 00:40:14 When he was announcingthat he was going to run,
776 00:40:16 every news story is, you know,they don't like him.
777 00:40:19 People in his own party,they don't like him.
778 00:40:21 And people in the other party,they really don't like him.
779 00:40:23 And it was like,"Oh, this is perfect."
780 00:40:25 He's making everybody upset.
781 00:40:28 A really interesting timein 4chan
782 00:40:31 is Trump's initial announcement
783 00:40:34 that he isrunning for president.
784 00:40:36 If you look atthe 4chan threads,
785 00:40:38 before Trump's speech,
786 00:40:40 it was fairly skeptical.
787 00:40:43 But then they saw
788 00:40:45 a lot of these things in his rhetoric that they like.
789 00:40:48 They saw nationalism.
790 00:40:49 They saw white nationalism.
791 00:40:51 And almost immediatelyyou'll see people being like,
792 00:40:54 can we get a Pepewith Donald Trump hair.
793 00:40:58 I want to startcirculating this.
794 00:40:59 And that happened,that's within hours.
795 00:41:18 I think thatPresident Trump is...
796 00:41:21 a real life version of Pepe,
797 00:41:24 in the ability to illicit
798 00:41:27 a reaction and to get attention
799 00:41:29 and to express and to capturepeoples' hopes and fears.
800 00:41:33 I was formerly theDirector of Strategy and Data
801 00:41:36 for the Trump campaign,
802 00:41:37 so I know as much, if not moreabout how to use voter data
803 00:41:42 than anybody elsein the country.
804 00:41:45 During the campaign,
805 00:41:47 there was an effort by 4chan
806 00:41:50 to get other peopleto support the president
807 00:41:52 by creating memes.
808 00:41:54 And then sharing them
809 00:41:56 to say, normies,
810 00:41:58 to try to motivate themto support President Trump.
811 00:42:02 The inside terminology
812 00:42:04 for this was"The Great Meme War."
813 00:42:09 It gave people who had neverreally been involved
814 00:42:11 in politics before
815 00:42:12 a way in.
816 00:42:15 The best memes that you see,
817 00:42:17 the most effective ones,
818 00:42:18 are just some personwho has no power at all.
819 00:42:21 They have no influence,they have no money,
820 00:42:22 they have no connections.
821 00:42:24 But if they can makeone good meme,
822 00:42:25 they can take off and go viral.
823 00:42:29 Then when you hypercharge it
824 00:42:30 by havingthe president retweet it,
825 00:42:31 you felt like you were partof this rebel group,
826 00:42:34 this insurgency
827 00:42:36 that was completelyunpredictable and from
828 00:42:39 where no one would haveever expected it.
829 00:42:41 How does an image like this
830 00:42:44 end up on Donald Trump'sTwitter account?
831 00:42:47 4chan supported Trumpfor a mix of reasons.
832 00:42:50 Some of it I thinkwas this nihilistic idea
833 00:42:52 that Trump was a wrecking ball.
834 00:42:54 And that they wantedto embarrass people
835 00:42:56 by electing him.
836 00:42:57 And so when Trumpretweeted himself
837 00:42:59 depicted as Pepe,
838 00:43:01 it was likethis watershed moment.
839 00:43:06 This is Donald Trump co-opting the idea
840 00:43:08 of himself, uh, sort of substituted as Pepe.
841 00:43:12 It was so transgressive,
842 00:43:14 so anti-PC.
843 00:43:16 To most of the voters out there, it just seemed kind of odd.
844 00:43:19 But, if you werepart of the community
845 00:43:21 that has been spending yearsand years, and years
846 00:43:24 using Pepe,
847 00:43:25 suddenly,a little antenna goes up
848 00:43:27 and you pick up a signaland say, "Wow.
849 00:43:30 Maybe this guy's right for us."
850 00:43:47 There's alwaysmagic going on
851 00:43:49 in any political campaign.
852 00:43:50 And so...
853 00:43:52 what happened when Pepe the Frogsuddenly became, um,
854 00:43:55 in effect Donald Trump'sinvisible running mate...
855 00:43:59 was that a magical forcehad entered the picture
856 00:44:02 and it was a wild card.
857 00:44:06 A meme can become the anchor
858 00:44:08 or the seed, if you will,
859 00:44:10 around which a group oflike-minded people can gather
860 00:44:13 and toward whichthey can focus their energy.
861 00:44:14 That's a basic toolof meme magic.
862 00:44:17 And that's one of the thingswe saw during the 2016 Election.
863 00:44:24 The way that magicwas used on the Chans was
864 00:44:26 they focused on building upa series of hypersigils,
865 00:44:31 -of images like Pepe the Frog.
866 00:44:34 And piled intothose images,
867 00:44:37 all of their hopes andall of their energy,
868 00:44:39 their emotional focus
869 00:44:41 of seeing Donald Trumpin the White House.
870 00:44:44 You ended up with a lot of people on the Chans just going,
871 00:44:46 "Wow, I could do this."
872 00:45:05 It's not Republicanismas we have known it.
873 00:45:12 These are racist ideas,race baiting ideas.
874 00:45:15 Anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant,
875 00:45:19 anti-women. All key tenantsmaking up the emerging
876 00:45:22 racist ideology
877 00:45:23 known as the alt-right.
878 00:45:26 Pepe!
879 00:45:27 Now, alt-right is short foralternative-right.
880 00:45:31 The Wall Street Journaldescribes it
881 00:45:33 as a loose and racist ideology
882 00:45:35 known as the alt-right.
883 00:45:38 Pepe!
884 00:45:39 Pepe!
885 00:45:42 And, and to most people,
886 00:45:43 that was a totally inexplicablething at the moment.
887 00:45:46 It must be totally random.
888 00:45:48 To the white supremacistanti-Semitic
889 00:45:50 neo-Nazi right in this country,
890 00:45:51 that was a moment of triumph.
891 00:45:59 Suddenly, Pepe the meme,the most...
892 00:46:02 silliest piece ofmeaningless culture,
893 00:46:05 was sort of likepassing through the screen.
894 00:46:08 It was kinda likethe dream of the troll,
895 00:46:11 making the Internet real.
896 00:46:22 It was becoming like,
897 00:46:24 you know, weird to, like,have this tattoo.
898 00:46:32 You're hereto get me involved in your...
899 00:46:34 nightmare world?
900 00:46:36 -What's good?
901 00:46:38 -We're here to exploit you.
902 00:46:42 Is this... this better beabout Landwolf.
903 00:46:46 Duck your head.
904 00:46:47 Please don't kick my cat.
905 00:46:50 If, if you can help it.
906 00:46:54 That... I think it's funnythat, like...
907 00:46:56 that Chris got the Pepe tattooedon his arm and he was like,
908 00:46:59 -"I have to hide it now."
909 00:47:01 "Somebody at Subway thoughtI was a white power dude."
910 00:47:03 -Yeah. Everybody...
911 00:47:05 everybody's actually very...
912 00:47:06 everybody'svery excited about Pepe.
913 00:47:08 They're like, "Oh wow,Pepe's this awesome meme, dude."
914 00:47:10 He rules.
915 00:47:11 -Yeah.-"Wow, you made Pepe?"
916 00:47:12 I was like all proud of myself,strutting down the street,
917 00:47:15 -you know.
918 00:47:17 Now peoplejust throw rocks at you.
919 00:47:19 "That's the guywho created Pepe!"
920 00:47:21 -Yeah. -You're not strutting
921 00:47:22 -anymore, are ya? Sicko!- No, I'm not.
922 00:47:24 Now I'm, now I'm like
923 00:47:25 just slithering down the street
924 00:47:28 in a pool of my own wasteor something.
925 00:47:31 - Whoa, like a...- Yeah.
926 00:47:32 -Like a slug lord.-Like a...
927 00:47:34 Just a... a slurping slimeball.
928 00:47:37 ButI really do feel like
929 00:47:39 this would only happen to you.
930 00:47:50 I interviewed Matt Furie in September 2016
931 00:47:53 with The Atlantic.
932 00:47:55 My impression of Furie was thathe was very well intentioned,
933 00:47:58 but somewhat naive aboutthe extent to which
934 00:48:01 this symbol had beenappropriated by the far right.
935 00:48:04 Pepe is a white nationalist symbol...
936 00:48:07 ...increasingly being used
937 00:48:08 by white supremacists...
938 00:48:10 It's something of a mascotby the alt-right.
939 00:48:12 Defining the alt-rightis somewhat easier these days.
940 00:48:15 But around 2016,
941 00:48:17 it encompassed a lot of people
942 00:48:18 who were ideologicallyopposed to the left
943 00:48:20 but not necessarily unitedon every issue.
944 00:48:23 And then you've got peoplelike Richard Spencer
945 00:48:24 who are overtwhite nationalists.
946 00:48:31 But the alt-right Pepeallows them
947 00:48:34 to pretend that they're kidding.
948 00:48:35 They're not kidding.
949 00:48:36 What they want is for you to be
950 00:48:38 both scared by the threat
951 00:48:40 and be mocked for being scaredin the first place.
952 00:48:43 The point is to cause thatkind of psychic anguish
953 00:48:46 and then they draw a great dealof pleasure from that.
954 00:48:48 Basically alt-rightis a big tent
955 00:48:50 or rather a big rock
956 00:48:52 under which creepsa diverse assortment of
957 00:48:54 paleo conservatives,men's rights misogynists...
958 00:48:57 I remember I went toa taping of Sam Bee.
959 00:49:01 And she had a segment aboutPepe the Frog.
960 00:49:05 And I got to meet herafter the taping.
961 00:49:07 And goodold-fashioned neo-Nazis.
962 00:49:09 And I was like, "You know,
963 00:49:10 Pepe was actually created bya friend of mine
964 00:49:12 and he's a really sweet artist
965 00:49:14 and, and it doesn't meanthis thing that it,
966 00:49:16 it transformed into,
967 00:49:18 and she was just,sort of like, "Okay."
968 00:49:20 The alt-right's use of Pepejust drowned out
969 00:49:23 any other visual interpretation,
970 00:49:25 you know, Trump's former campaign chair Steve Bannon said
971 00:49:29 the Democratsare not the opposition party,
972 00:49:31 the mediais the opposition party
973 00:49:33 and how do you beat the media?
974 00:49:34 You flood the zone with shit.
975 00:49:35 Well, these peopleare flooding the zone with shit
976 00:49:37 so that you don't knowwhat's real or what's not.
977 00:49:42 I mean quite franklyI've been to the events.
978 00:49:44 It wasn't even real.
979 00:49:45 Literally,they're just Jewish actors.
980 00:49:47 A lot of the KKK guyswith their hats off
981 00:49:49 literally looks likethe cast of Seinfeld...
982 00:49:52 A conspiracy theoristlike Alex Jones
983 00:49:54 appeals to Trump because
984 00:49:56 one of Trump'smajor political tools
985 00:49:58 is forcing people to rejectobjective reality
986 00:50:01 in favor ofhis version of reality.
987 00:50:03 Well, Donald Trump,let me say this.
988 00:50:05 You are the leading presidentialfrontrunner
989 00:50:07 with the Republicans
990 00:50:09 gaining a huge lead as you don'tback down, but I got to just...
991 00:50:11 And the point of it is toobliterate objective truth.
992 00:50:13 Fake news!
993 00:50:15 Fuck CNN, fuck CNN!
994 00:50:18 Trump frames his language
995 00:50:19 in terms of winners and losers.
996 00:50:21 I said are you sickof fucking winning?
997 00:50:23 No!
998 00:50:24 What happenswhen that mindset is adopted
999 00:50:26 by people on the bottom?
1000 00:50:28 Instead of thinking of society
1001 00:50:29 so like where everyoneis sort of equal
1002 00:50:30 and we're alllifting ourselves up together,
1003 00:50:32 you think the worldis a hierarchy
1004 00:50:34 and the only way you'regoing to get to the top
1005 00:50:36 is by displacing someone else.
1006 00:50:39 Then you startgetting these ideas like,
1007 00:50:40 "Well, maybe I'm at the bottom
1008 00:50:42 because this group of peoplehas snuck their way to the top."
1009 00:50:46 They probably cheated their wayup there.
1010 00:50:48 And so then you getthese elaborate
1011 00:50:50 conspiracies about like,
1012 00:50:51 "Oh, well, the, the Jews runthe media.
1013 00:50:54 Uh, "Immigrants,they're the problem."
1014 00:50:55 Build a wall! Build a wall!
1015 00:50:58 Fuck those dirty beaners.Build a wall.
1016 00:51:02 We're not giving in.We're not going away.
1017 00:51:05 Have we not given them
1018 00:51:07 a big giant red, white,and blue middle finger?
1019 00:51:14 So, thenit started to get strange.
1020 00:51:18 Somebody on the Chans,nobody knows who,
1021 00:51:21 found an ancient Egyptianfrog god
1022 00:51:23 whose name was Kek.
1023 00:51:25 He looked likean anthropomorphic figure
1024 00:51:27 with a frog's headrather like Pepe.
1025 00:51:29 Obviously that had to be shared
1026 00:51:32 and... the Chans went ape.
1027 00:51:35 The reason whythis caught on
1028 00:51:36 is that Kek is a bitof gamer slang.
1029 00:51:39 For complicated reasons,where we say "ha-ha-ha,"
1030 00:51:42 in certain gaming circles,you say "kek-kek-kek."
1031 00:51:50 Trumpsters taking the hill.
1032 00:51:52 The nation of Kek.
1033 00:51:53 Kekistan taking the hill.
1034 00:51:56 They came upwith this idea of Kekistan,
1035 00:51:58 of a kind of promised landfor Pepes.
1036 00:52:01 And anytime you have these ideas
1037 00:52:04 of ethnic homelands
1038 00:52:05 and tribalist blood and soil,
1039 00:52:08 it automatically seems tocluster in
1040 00:52:11 with the worst exercisesin human depravity.
1041 00:52:16 All you need to do is justput on the mask.
1042 00:52:19 Put on the mask.
1043 00:52:26 There had been rumorsflying on the Chans
1044 00:52:28 that Hillary Clinton wasactually seriously ill.
1045 00:52:31 And a great many chaos magicians
1046 00:52:33 were focusing their magical workon one goal
1047 00:52:36 which is making her collapsein public.
1048 00:52:39 There's a thingthat people talk about
1049 00:52:41 in occult circlescalled the TSW moment.
1050 00:52:44 A TSW, the polite version isThis Stuff Works.
1051 00:52:49 The Chanswent through their TSW moment.
1052 00:52:52 Hillary Clinton collapsed
1053 00:52:54 and had to be hauled intothe SUV by other people.
1054 00:53:01 I honestly think at that point
1055 00:53:03 if Donald Trumphad asked the habituated Chans
1056 00:53:06 to walk into the ocean,
1057 00:53:07 they would have done it.
1058 00:53:11 You know,to just be grossly generalistic,
1059 00:53:16 you could puthalf of Trump's supporters
1060 00:53:19 into what I callthe basket of deplorables.
1061 00:53:25 -Right?
1062 00:53:28 The racist, sexist,
1063 00:53:30 homophobic, xenophobic,
1064 00:53:33 -Islamophobic...
1065 00:53:36 Hillary Clintonthen released an explainer
1066 00:53:38 explaining that Pepewas a hate symbol
1067 00:53:41 and that he symbolizedthe alt-right
1068 00:53:43 and through these associations,
1069 00:53:45 it really made Trumplook like a neo-Nazi.
1070 00:53:49 But it made her also looka little clueless, right.
1071 00:53:52 The idea that she wasdenouncing a cartoon frog
1072 00:53:55 was delightful to 4chan,
1073 00:53:57 delightful to the alt-right.
1074 00:53:59 It was the best thing
1075 00:54:01 that could have happenedfor them.
1076 00:54:03 It certainly galvanized people
1077 00:54:05 who thought,"Hey, I really dig Pepe."
1078 00:54:08 And she justlaunched an attack on me
1079 00:54:10 and called me a Nazi.
1080 00:54:14 Ladies and gentlemen,the battle has just begun.
1081 00:54:17 And we are ready.
1082 00:54:19 And I think that that just kind of solidified it.
1083 00:54:23 Now once you startdeeming something
1084 00:54:26 as a hate symbol,
1085 00:54:27 It does, kind of, become that.
1086 00:54:30 A popular cartoon characterturned Internet meme,
1087 00:54:33 Pepe the frog, has been added to
1088 00:54:35 the Anti-Defamation League'sdatabase of hate symbols
1089 00:54:38 In a press release, the organization wrote,
1090 00:54:39 the character had been, quote,
1091 00:54:41 "Used by haters on social media
1092 00:54:43 to suggest racist, anti-Semitic or other bigoted notions
1093 00:54:47 as a hate symbol."
1094 00:54:48 Matt's namewas in the description
1095 00:54:50 about it on the website.
1096 00:54:52 - -It's like a nightmare.
1097 00:54:57 He's thinking, "I've workedmy whole life
1098 00:54:59 as an artist
1099 00:55:00 and now I'm gonna be lumped in
1100 00:55:03 with this weird new swastika.
1101 00:55:06 Matt Furieput out a statement
1102 00:55:08 to the Associated Press.He said that he was horrified
1103 00:55:10 to see his creationbecome a mascot
1104 00:55:11 for the alt-rightfringe movement.
1105 00:55:13 I don't want tobe associated with this.
1106 00:55:15 You know, I'm, like, tryingto write children's books.
1107 00:55:19 The nature of the mediaand politics and stuff that
1108 00:55:21 I've been trying to escapefrom my entire life.
1109 00:55:25 I don't give a shitabout any of that stuff.
1110 00:55:27 Then I got pulled into itjust because...
1111 00:55:29 I'm on a hate symboldatabase list now
1112 00:55:32 and it pissed me off.
1113 00:55:43 As the news was going onthat this Internet frog
1114 00:55:47 has been markedas like a hate symbol,
1115 00:55:49 that's when I gotthe phone call from our buyer.
1116 00:55:52 They pulled itright away.
1117 00:55:53 So, we have about 3,000 items
1118 00:55:56 that were going to gointo 580 stores across the U.S.
1119 00:56:00 and now it's in my garage. So...
1120 00:56:03 These were probably,like, $15 each to make.
1121 00:56:06 If you think of 15 times 3,000,
1122 00:56:08 like, it's pretty crazy.
1123 00:56:10 -Yeah it's 45,000 dollars.- Yup.
1124 00:56:15 We didn't wantto give it to Goodwill.
1125 00:56:17 We didn't wantto sell it ourselves
1126 00:56:19 because we're afraid...
1127 00:56:20 white supremacistswould wear it and then...
1128 00:56:24 What is that worth versusputting out a hate symbol?
1129 00:56:27 And I'm sure you feelthe same way.
1130 00:56:31 A lot of the merchandiseended up having to be destroyed.
1131 00:56:35 Yeah, now,that's kind of the least
1132 00:56:36 -of my worries.- I know.
1133 00:56:41 He was a dummy.
1134 00:56:42 He just kinda let his character get away from him
1135 00:56:44 and now, this shit happened.
1136 00:56:47 Matt is just like most of us,a poor, cartooning loser.
1137 00:56:51 I was suggesting that he suethe Anti-Defamation League
1138 00:56:55 for defamation.
1139 00:57:03 I'm just tryingto be positive.
1140 00:57:06 Not everybody has a platform to talk about this kinda stuff.
1141 00:57:10 I teamed up with the ADL
1142 00:57:13 to just try to offer peoplesome creative solutions.
1143 00:57:16 -Hi, everybody.
1144 00:57:19 Um...
1145 00:57:22 So what we're trying to do now
1146 00:57:24 is to starta Save Pepe campaign.
1147 00:57:26 -And uh...
1148 00:57:32 I invite everybody
1149 00:57:33 to draw their ownpeaceful version of Pepe
1150 00:57:36 and share it on social mediawith the hashtag "savepepe."
1151 00:57:41 Can we turn something
1152 00:57:43 that's become a recognizedhate symbol
1153 00:57:45 into a recognized love symbol?
1154 00:57:52 It was really funny,but it was also really lovely.
1155 00:57:54 -Like I tweeted about it. I...-Yeah.
1156 00:57:56 -I tried to help. I, like...-Yeah. I drew a Pepe.
1157 00:57:58 Part ofthe Save Pepe campaign.
1158 00:58:02 I'm like, damn, he's kind ofgoing through a situation
1159 00:58:05 that isn't rightand I want to help him out.
1160 00:58:11 Does that look like Pepe?
1161 00:58:14 I've never drawn Pepe before,
1162 00:58:16 but I figured I'm going to dowhatever I can to help
1163 00:58:19 because I'm sucha big fan of Matt's, and...
1164 00:58:21 So, I'm butcheringPepe here, but...
1165 00:58:24 something like that.
1166 00:58:26 In Matt's work,
1167 00:58:28 I can feel his lovefor nature and the universe.
1168 00:58:33 I was like, "Oh, yeah,Matt's my buddy, you know.
1169 00:58:35 I like Pepe, so, I justkind of, like, you know...
1170 00:58:37 I made a Peace Frog Pepe,you know.
1171 00:58:41 Does that look like Pepe?
1172 00:58:44 It's getting lessand less like Pepe.
1173 00:58:50 I've been working onit for about a month now
1174 00:58:52 and I've gottenabout 500 and counting
1175 00:58:55 brand new peace Pepes.
1176 00:58:57 My goal with thisis to eventually start something
1177 00:59:01 that I'd like to callthe Peace Pepe Database of Love.
1178 00:59:07 My whole thing isjust to focus on positive
1179 00:59:10 and just keep being creative.
1180 00:59:27 The attemptby Matt Furie
1181 00:59:29 to wrest control over Pepe,
1182 00:59:31 it seems like he understandsthe Internet
1183 00:59:33 about as wellas Hillary Clinton does.
1184 00:59:35 Maybe if the original artworkwasn't so pedestrian and basic
1185 00:59:40 that an eight year oldcan draw Pepe.
1186 00:59:42 A scribblingthat was improved upon by others
1187 00:59:45 that was given meaningthat it never had before,
1188 00:59:48 I would justencourage Matt to...
1189 00:59:51 you know, just be gladto have been a small part
1190 00:59:54 of a very big thing.
1191 00:59:57 Art is supposed to betherapeutic, so, uh...
1192 01:00:00 before Trump got elected,
1193 01:00:02 I just did this kind of, like,nightmare scenario of Pepe,
1194 01:00:06 like slowly morphinginto Donald Trump
1195 01:00:09 and then into a monsterand then,
1196 01:00:11 uh, being trapped insidethe monster's mouth,
1197 01:00:13 as you can see, and, uh...
1198 01:00:15 It's like a nuclear war.
1199 01:00:25 This isthe new American moment.
1200 01:00:28 This is like Martin-Luther-King- I-have-a-dream speech.
1201 01:00:32 It's like Washingtoncrossing the Delaware
1202 01:00:36 ♪ We are the champions
1203 01:00:45 We were all ecstatic.
1204 01:00:50 Donald Trump, hewasn't supposed to be there.
1205 01:00:53 We all felt, like,
1206 01:00:55 the meming had played a partin the election.
1207 01:00:58 The Internet's jokekind of came to fruition.
1208 01:01:14 The chaotic scene just blocks outside the secure
1209 01:01:18 of the inaugurationand parade routes.
1210 01:01:22 -What?
1211 01:01:24 It's Pepe.He's become kind of a symbol...
1212 01:01:47 After the election,Matt just came to me and said,
1213 01:01:50 "Hey, I'm going to drawa comic strip with Pepe in it
1214 01:01:53 and I'm going to kill him."
1215 01:01:55 The Pepe thing was soout of control at that point
1216 01:01:58 and whatever Pepe meantto all these other people
1217 01:02:01 didn't meanthe same thing to me.
1218 01:02:04 So I just killed him.
1219 01:02:08 I just thought it'd befunny to do a comic strip
1220 01:02:10 where all the boysare at his funeral.
1221 01:02:13 ♪ Your picture
1222 01:02:17 ♪ Is still
1223 01:02:21 ♪ On my wall
1224 01:02:26 ♪ On my wall
1225 01:02:30 ♪ The color
1226 01:02:35 ♪ Are bright
1227 01:02:40 ♪ Bright
1228 01:02:44 - ♪ As ever
1229 01:02:48 ♪ The red is strong
1230 01:02:52 ♪ The blue will rest pure
1231 01:02:57 ♪ Something lasts
1232 01:03:00 ♪ A long time
1233 01:03:06 ♪ Something lasts
1234 01:03:10 ♪ A long time
1235 01:03:19 I didn't think it'dget noticed or anything.
1236 01:03:23 I'm sure you recognize
1237 01:03:24 the cartoon characterPepe the Frog.
1238 01:03:26 Well, he won't be around so much longer
1239 01:03:28 because his creator has decided to kill him off.
1240 01:03:31 A carton frog diedon the Internet.
1241 01:03:33 His name was Pepe.
1242 01:03:35 It seemed like every timehe drew Pepe,
1243 01:03:38 he would gethounded by reporters.
1244 01:03:44 - He just hated it.
1245 01:03:52 When I had first seenMatt's death of Pepe comic,
1246 01:03:56 I was honestly a bit sad.
1247 01:04:00 But the Pepe we see,unfortunately,
1248 01:04:01 has been so far removedfrom the original...
1249 01:04:03 that the Pepe Matt was killingwas his own.
1250 01:04:19 The burdenof this weird Pepe shit
1251 01:04:21 was starting to make me feelanxious and weird.
1252 01:04:29 Maybe it iswhatever people say it is.
1253 01:04:31 Like I can't fucking control it, you know.
1254 01:04:40 ♪ The power that's inside
1255 01:04:43 ♪ Pokemon!Gotta catch 'em all! ♪
1256 01:04:45 ♪ It's you and me
1257 01:04:54 Owning a rare Pepeis about being alpha.
1258 01:04:57 It's about having dank,rare Pepes nobody else has.
1259 01:05:02 And it's about how do weget to the moon in a Lambo.
1260 01:05:07 Okay, let's pull it up.
1261 01:05:09 I'm in these crypto forums,
1262 01:05:12 and for the longest time,
1263 01:05:13 these guys would talkabout Pepe Cash.
1264 01:05:17 Some huge guys,
1265 01:05:19 like, seven to eight figureportfolio crypto guys.
1266 01:05:22 And I look at the website,I'm like, "What?
1267 01:05:24 What the fuckare they talking about?"
1268 01:05:26 What is it?
1269 01:05:31 So I actually am a Pepe Cash millionaire.
1270 01:05:34 How many million is that?
1271 01:05:36 Is that 363 million?
1272 01:05:38 Ah, 363 million Internet Pepe.
1273 01:05:42 You know, I like that.
1274 01:05:45 This is whenwe christened the SS Rare Pepe
1275 01:05:47 which I bought with Pepe Cashand I live on it.
1276 01:05:52 If you want to explainthe rare Pepe economy,
1277 01:05:55 imagine a few dozen geekson the Internet
1278 01:05:58 came up with a way to tradememes off 4chan
1279 01:06:02 and lock them into ownership.
1280 01:06:05 There are some Pepesthat are superhero knockoffs.
1281 01:06:07 You know, Iron Man Pepes,Spiderman Pepes.
1282 01:06:10 Some people's heroesare more political in nature.
1283 01:06:13 Trump Pepe,
1284 01:06:14 which is awesome,because he's just like,
1285 01:06:16 "Make crypto great again,whether you like it or not."
1286 01:06:20 It's much differentthan comic books,
1287 01:06:21 or even collectiblebaseball cards
1288 01:06:23 because it exists as mathon the Internet first...
1289 01:06:28 and then later you can printthe physical copy of it.
1290 01:06:32 This is the physical card.This is worthless.
1291 01:06:35 This is the thing that's worth
1292 01:06:37 hundreds of thousandsof dollars.
1293 01:06:40 So, I was goingto this digital arts conference
1294 01:06:42 called Rare AF. Rare As Fuck.
1295 01:06:46 Luckily for me,
1296 01:06:48 they're having the world'sfirst rare Pepe auction.
1297 01:06:51 Rare Pepe after rare Pepe
1298 01:06:53 after beautiful rare Pepepassing by
1299 01:06:55 and then finallygets to the end.
1300 01:06:57 It's the ultimate rare Pepe.
1301 01:06:59 The Homer Pepe.
1302 01:07:03 And I'm like,"I'm getting this thing."
1303 01:07:04 Homer for 200.
1304 01:07:06 - Homer!-Two hundred.
1305 01:07:07 People start placing bids.
1306 01:07:08 Twenty, 30, 40,100,000 Pepe Cash.
1307 01:07:11 Two hundred thousand Pepe Cash.
1308 01:07:12 - Two seventy-five.- Two seventy.
1309 01:07:14 It starts gettingso crazy
1310 01:07:15 and it getsto 350,000 Pepe Cash.
1311 01:07:18 Which is about39,000 US dollars.
1312 01:07:21 Three hundred fifty going once,going twice.
1313 01:07:24 - Uh-oh!-Sold!
1314 01:07:28 What inspired youto pay 39,000 US dollars
1315 01:07:31 -for a rare Pepe?-I'm just excited about Pepe.
1316 01:07:33 Okay.
1317 01:07:36 So this is Homer Pepe.
1318 01:07:39 Currently the world'smost valuable rare Pepe.
1319 01:07:43 Now what makesthis Pepe worth so much?
1320 01:07:46 It's the only onewith a misprint.
1321 01:07:49 Wait a minute."Wait a mintue. Wait a mintue."
1322 01:07:53 That's value.
1323 01:08:25 You're Matt, right?
1324 01:08:30 You have gainfully employedall of us.
1325 01:08:35 So, uh...What are you guys talking about?
1326 01:08:38 We're all workingthe general realm of, you know,
1327 01:08:41 weird online behaviorfrom a scientific perspective.
1328 01:08:44 We have, uh,security people from the U.S.
1329 01:08:47 We have cryptographersfrom the U.K.
1330 01:08:49 We have systems peoplefrom, uh, mainland Europe
1331 01:08:52 and we take a large scaleanalysis of data,
1332 01:08:54 getting a quantitativeunderstanding of hate speech
1333 01:08:57 throughout the web.
1334 01:08:59 We had to figure out a way
1335 01:09:01 to be able to measurethis stuff at large scale
1336 01:09:03 and we ended up buildinga system to measure memes.
1337 01:09:07 Just to give youan idea of the scale, Matt.
1338 01:09:09 So we had over a billion posts
1339 01:09:12 from Twitter, Reddit,/pol/ and Gab.,
1340 01:09:15 and we examined the 160 millionsome odd images.
1341 01:09:18 So obviously,these weren't all Pepes,
1342 01:09:19 but the scale of this datais huge.
1343 01:09:22 -This is only for a year.-Interesting.
1344 01:09:24 There's a varietyof different memes,
1345 01:09:26 but there tends to bea Pepe variant
1346 01:09:29 in every single oneof these clusters. So...
1347 01:09:31 You pick a random meme
1348 01:09:33 and Pepe has beeninserted into it
1349 01:09:35 in some way, shape or form.
1350 01:09:37 In a lot of ways,Pepe becomes an entry point
1351 01:09:39 to radicalization.
1352 01:09:41 That's a very scary thingto think about.
1353 01:09:43 Do you feel anypersonal responsibility for...
1354 01:09:47 the bad stuffthat has come out of this?
1355 01:09:50 I mean, you shouldn't,
1356 01:09:51 but you know,we're humans, right?
1357 01:09:52 We feel guiltfor things
1358 01:09:53 that we shouldn't feelguilt for.
1359 01:09:55 Um, I'm... I mean, uh,
1360 01:09:58 maybe I could have beenmore proactive earlier on
1361 01:10:00 -to, like, try to control it.-Yeah.
1362 01:10:02 So, the question of,"Can you get Pepe back?"
1363 01:10:04 The reality is thatthere is, you know,
1364 01:10:06 160 million memes, essentially,in a year, that we collected.
1365 01:10:10 Not all of themwere Pepes again,
1366 01:10:11 but a good chunk of them are.
1367 01:10:12 That's a tough genieto put back in the bottle.
1368 01:10:14 Um, yeah. I wish you luck.
1369 01:10:16 I do.
1370 01:10:18 Sincerely.
1371 01:10:23 So...
1372 01:10:25 I try to stay positive,you know.
1373 01:10:27 But to be honest, I...
1374 01:10:29 I've gotten trolled.
1375 01:10:31 Somebody sent me this.
1376 01:10:32 I don't take it personally
1377 01:10:35 even thoughI'm having my head decapitated.
1378 01:10:38 It is what it iswhat it is, right?
1379 01:10:41 Um...
1380 01:10:45 It's not like wearingon kind of, like, my spirit.
1381 01:10:48 But it's kind of wearingon my drive to be creative.
1382 01:10:54 It did manifest anxieties thatI have yet to unravel.
1383 01:11:01 He just kindaslept a lot and, uh...
1384 01:11:05 You know, honestly it waskinda like hard to talk to him.
1385 01:11:09 You know, I let him knowI was there for him
1386 01:11:11 and all that, but, like,
1387 01:11:12 there wasn't anythinganyone could really do.
1388 01:11:17 Tonight a Denton ISD assistant principal
1389 01:11:20 is coming under fire for writing a new children's book.
1390 01:11:23 A book, some say,is politically motivated.
1391 01:11:25 I'm using Pepe just asa lighthearted way
1392 01:11:27 of expressing maybe someconservative, uh, values.
1393 01:11:32 If you love America,
1394 01:11:33 you're going to love this bookfor sure.
1395 01:11:39 When Matt found out
1396 01:11:40 that there was an Islamophobicracist children's book
1397 01:11:45 starring Pepe coming outon Amazon,
1398 01:11:49 he was so upset.
1399 01:11:52 And that's when he kind of...freaked out about it.
1400 01:11:57 It was, like,the last straw.
1401 01:12:01 It's like... It's like hell,man. Like...
1402 01:12:04 If you want to...If you want to escape hell,
1403 01:12:06 you can't ignore it.
1404 01:12:08 You almost have to goto the center of it.
1405 01:12:20 It is not very often
1406 01:12:22 that nerdy intellectualproperty lawyers
1407 01:12:24 get asked to fightthe alt-right.
1408 01:12:27 But when we do, we're ready.
1409 01:12:33 I have a whole teamof lawyers
1410 01:12:35 that are working with mepro bono
1411 01:12:37 and have reallyempowered me to feel
1412 01:12:39 like I do have some sayin all this.
1413 01:12:45 He really wanted to preventthe digital release of the book.
1414 01:12:48 Inside it was, in fact,
1415 01:12:51 a not so veiled referenceto a lot of alt-right themes.
1416 01:12:55 We found outwho was publishing it
1417 01:12:57 and explained that Matt Furieowned the copyright to Pepe
1418 01:13:00 and that we were prepared to enforce his rights in court.
1419 01:13:04 The Adventuresof Pepe and Pede.
1420 01:13:06 the electronic versionwas never published.
1421 01:13:09 But the issue here is,when you shut down one person,
1422 01:13:13 others pop up.
1423 01:13:17 - You know,
1424 01:13:18 I'm a compassionate guyand I'm a sensitive guy.
1425 01:13:22 But being able to workwith a team of lawyers
1426 01:13:24 has given me strength to...
1427 01:13:28 shut these assholes up.
1428 01:13:31 You've been suedby a frog, bro.
1429 01:13:32 Do you evenknow this yet?
1430 01:13:33 No.
1431 01:13:34 -It's all over the Internet.-I'm surprised.
1432 01:13:36 Surprise, motherfucker.You got sued by a frog.
1433 01:13:37 You've been suedby a fucking' frog, dude.
1434 01:13:38 A conspiracy frog named Pepe.
1435 01:13:42 We did sella poster that a listener made
1436 01:13:45 titled Make American Great Again
1437 01:13:46 that had a bunch of images,
1438 01:13:48 of symbols that were popularduring the campaign.
1439 01:13:51 We talkedto our trademark lawyers
1440 01:13:52 and they said,"Mr. Jones,this is so outrageous.
1441 01:13:56 It's againstthe First Amendment"
1442 01:13:58 It is insane.
1443 01:14:00 This is cockamamie balderdash.
1444 01:14:04 He was selling a posterwith Pepe on it
1445 01:14:06 with a bunch of douchebags
1446 01:14:08 and I just didn't want himto sell the poster.
1447 01:14:09 The problemisn't the drawing
1448 01:14:11 or the making of the art,you can do that.
1449 01:14:14 It's just whenyou mass produce it and sell it,
1450 01:14:17 that's when it getsinto a stickier area.
1451 01:14:20 He's like, "Yeah, the man's gonna stop us."
1452 01:14:23 He just jacked upthe price of the poster
1453 01:14:26 and then offered to sign them.
1454 01:14:28 I'm trying to freePepe the Frog.
1455 01:14:30 And I'm eithergoing to succeed
1456 01:14:31 or I'll be destroyedin the process, but that's okay.
1457 01:14:35 I actually don't knowmany people on here.
1458 01:14:38 - Is that Trump, too?- Yeah.
1459 01:14:39 -There's are two Trumps.-Sounds like having two Trumps
1460 01:14:41 in the same poster,is that legal?
1461 01:14:45 Well, that's Billie JoeArmstrong from Green Day.
1462 01:14:49 And there's Marshafrom The Brady Bunch.
1463 01:14:50 -Billy Idol.
1464 01:14:52 -Billy Idol.-And there's Courtney Love.
1465 01:15:00 A lot of times,I'm cutting people's hair
1466 01:15:02 for courtwhen they're in trouble so...
1467 01:15:04 Yeah, I'm not into...I'm not in any trouble at all.
1468 01:15:06 Just, uh, weird situation.
1469 01:15:09 Yeah, I've got thiskinda, like, a notorious,
1470 01:15:12 uh, character namedPepe the Frog.
1471 01:15:15 -Have you ever heard of him?- Yeah, I actually have.
1472 01:15:16 -My kids have, too. Yeah.-Oh, yeah?
1473 01:15:19 - This guy, Pepe?-Yeah, that guy right there.
1474 01:15:22 So the guy, Matt,do you know him?
1475 01:15:25 That's me.
1476 01:15:26 That who you got to goto court with?
1477 01:15:28 Oh, no, that's me. I am Matt.
1478 01:15:29 - Oh, you're Matt.-Yeah.
1479 01:15:31 Oh.
1480 01:15:35 I don't know who this guy is doing, this Furie fella.
1481 01:15:38 But I agreed to be deposed...
1482 01:15:41 for the Pepe the Frog deal.
1483 01:15:43 Sir, would you raiseyour right hand to be sworn?
1484 01:15:44 Do you solemnly state
1485 01:15:46 the testimonyyou're about to give
1486 01:15:47 will be the truth,the whole truth
1487 01:15:48 -and nothing but the truth?-I do.
1488 01:15:53 I don't like the frog.I don't like this whole thing.
1489 01:15:56 But I got to stand upfor the First Amendment.
1490 01:15:59 Let's say the frog is triggeringfor me now.
1491 01:16:03 I hate Pepe.
1492 01:16:05 Video tape deposition of Matt Furie
1493 01:16:07 in the matterof Matt Furie vs. InfoWars,
1494 01:16:10 and Free Speech, LLC.
1495 01:16:13 So from 2001 to 2007,
1496 01:16:16 you had sort of this carefreepart-time, knucklehead life.
1497 01:16:21 I still have that.
1498 01:16:22 Excellent.
1499 01:16:25 And what did you do to preparefor today's deposition?
1500 01:16:28 Really nothing.
1501 01:16:30 So how did you pickthe name Pepe the Frog?
1502 01:16:33 It sounded like, um, "peepee."
1503 01:16:37 To go peepee.
1504 01:16:39 So it isa cartoon frog, right?
1505 01:16:40 Yes, it's a cartoon frog.
1506 01:16:41 It has round lips, right?
1507 01:16:45 I wouldn't call that round lips.
1508 01:16:47 - Okay. Uh...-More tubular.
1509 01:16:49 Tubular lips.
1510 01:16:50 I thought I had some kind of like Zen-like grip.
1511 01:16:53 He kinda did the good cop,bad cop thing on me.
1512 01:16:55 He was like, "So you likeBeavis and Butthead"?
1513 01:16:59 Do you watchRen and Stimpy?
1514 01:17:00 Yes.
1515 01:17:01 But then,he was all kind of like...
1516 01:17:03 "Let's get 'em."
1517 01:17:04 Forty-nine.This is a fun one.
1518 01:17:11 Hold that upand tell us what's 49?
1519 01:17:14 Um, yeah, it's an allegoryon the direction nature's going
1520 01:17:17 from my perspective.
1521 01:17:19 Uh, excuse me.The second to last page.
1522 01:17:21 -Page 20.-I'm sorry.
1523 01:17:22 I worked out this morning.
1524 01:17:25 It's just coincidentalthat they look alike?
1525 01:17:27 Absolutely.
1526 01:17:28 An original characterthat's based on a hot dog man.
1527 01:17:32 Part man, part hot dog.
1528 01:17:35 It's clear what all this is.
1529 01:17:36 So people can say Jones is usinga white supremacist symbol
1530 01:17:38 when it's not.
1531 01:17:40 It's a way of sayingI'm a white supremacist.
1532 01:17:41 It's a way of defaming me...
1533 01:17:44 and acting like I stolesomething all at the same time.
1534 01:17:46 It's just... god! Evil!
1535 01:17:49 That's just evil!
1536 01:17:51 Is that Big Bird?
1537 01:17:52 Yes.
1538 01:17:54 Thirty-oneis not Grimace?
1539 01:17:55 No.
1540 01:17:57 So those aren'tderivations of the Hamburglar?
1541 01:17:59 -Oh, these guys?- Yes.
1542 01:18:01 -Do you mean Mayor McCheese?
1543 01:18:04 And you got no licenseto put that up.
1544 01:18:06 -When I was in sixth grade,
1545 01:18:08 I did not attain the licenseto draw this stuff.
1546 01:18:13 You know, I went to the bathroomat one point
1547 01:18:15 and he's taking a piss, too,and he's like, uh...
1548 01:18:18 "So I guess this is whereall the dicks hang out."
1549 01:18:20 And I was like,"Ha ha, that's funny.
1550 01:18:22 And also awkwardthat I got my dick in my hand
1551 01:18:24 and we're talkingright now and..."
1552 01:18:26 And then, shortly after that,
1553 01:18:27 he's justfucking screaming at me.
1554 01:18:29 We're suing, uh, Alex Jones...
1555 01:18:32 because he...
1556 01:18:33 That's not the questionI asked you.
1557 01:18:35 Oh.
1558 01:18:36 Answer the questionI asked you.
1559 01:18:37 It... It...
1560 01:18:39 twisted my noodles for a whileand I, like...
1561 01:18:42 You know when you, like,say something in passing
1562 01:18:45 to somebody elseand it's like...
1563 01:18:47 you wish you would've saidsomething else.
1564 01:18:48 This was like four hours of concentrated...
1565 01:18:52 me wishing I would have saidsomething else.
1566 01:18:55 It's nota comfortable situation.
1567 01:18:57 Dude, it sucked. It was hard.
1568 01:19:00 From my point of view,this is a direct copy.
1569 01:19:04 So all of yourreferences before
1570 01:19:06 are just references.
1571 01:19:07 But this one is what,traced, you mean?
1572 01:19:09 Yeah.
1573 01:19:10 Why do you suppose Pepelooks happy in that picture?
1574 01:19:13 Pepe's kinda like a mirror.
1575 01:19:15 So the way that users onlinewould use Pepe
1576 01:19:18 is a reflection of...
1577 01:19:21 themselves, to an extent.
1578 01:19:22 That's my...interpretation of it.
1579 01:19:27 No further questions.
1580 01:19:29 I have nothing else here either.
1581 01:19:30 Thank you for your time.
1582 01:19:31 This marks the end of the videotape deposition of Alex Jones.
1583 01:19:33 This marks the end of the videotape deposition of Alex Jones.
1584 01:19:34 Good luck.
1585 01:19:35 We're going off recordand the time is 13:00 even.
1586 01:19:42 Let's try to finda little round...
1587 01:19:43 - Oh!-Oh, there it is.
1588 01:19:45 -There.-So we need two dark green ones.
1589 01:19:48 Okay.
1590 01:19:51 It took me weeksto detangle my mind
1591 01:19:52 after all this legal stuff.
1592 01:19:57 That's what I signed up for,you know.
1593 01:19:59 It's not goingto be easy, but...
1594 01:20:01 but I'm willing to gothe distance with this shit.
1595 01:20:10 ♪ And he hops and hops
1596 01:20:12 ♪ Pepe, watch outAnd he hops and hops ♪
1597 01:20:16 ♪ Pepe, do stop
1598 01:20:17 - ♪ And he hops and hops
1599 01:20:19 ♪ You make me dizzy
1600 01:20:22 ♪ You make me dizzy
1601 01:20:23 ♪ I say, Pepe, come here
1602 01:20:25 -Yeah.- ♪ And he hops and hops
1603 01:20:28 ♪ Pepe, watch out
1604 01:20:36 Everybody'ssaying congratulations.
1605 01:20:39 "A sparkle of good newsin these troubling times."
1606 01:20:49 This was actuallygoing to trial.
1607 01:20:51 And then Louis was just, like,
1608 01:20:52 "Oh, surprisinglythey want to settle."
1609 01:20:54 We were confident we were gonna prevail at trial.
1610 01:20:57 And InfoWars gave up.
1611 01:21:00 It just went liveon InfoWars.com.
1612 01:21:03 InfoWars settlesPepe the Frog lawsuit.
1613 01:21:05 Pays tiny settlementto creator Matt Furie.
1614 01:21:08 This amount...
1615 01:21:10 It's a bar tabat a topless club, you know,
1616 01:21:12 for one good night, so...
1617 01:21:13 -So, what the heck.
1618 01:21:15 This is more than I've ever made on theBoy's Club comic books.
1619 01:21:17 So, it just, kind of...To put it into context, like,
1620 01:21:20 Alex Jones is like...
1621 01:21:22 "Hey, we got awaywith barely paying anything."
1622 01:21:25 But it's all...it's all relative.
1623 01:21:27 This is a big deal to showwhat these bullies are up to
1624 01:21:29 and what happenswhen you stand up to them.
1625 01:21:33 At the end of the day,he's just...
1626 01:21:35 selling a bunch of bad ideas,bad supplements,
1627 01:21:39 in a bad attitude.
1628 01:21:41 It's just a business.
1629 01:21:44 Without you buyingthe videos and the books
1630 01:21:46 and the supplements,
1631 01:21:47 we couldn't put onone hell of a junkyard dog fight
1632 01:21:50 against these bastards.
1633 01:21:53 This caseagainst InfoWars
1634 01:21:55 was the latestin a string of successes.
1635 01:21:57 We went after Richard Spencer.
1636 01:21:59 Uh, we went after Baked Alaska.
1637 01:22:01 We went after the Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website.
1638 01:22:05 We have successfully enforcedMatt's copyrights in Pepe
1639 01:22:09 against somewhere between 75and 100 different entities
1640 01:22:13 in connection with imagesor language of hate.
1641 01:22:16 And this is beginningto turn the narrative
1642 01:22:19 of Pepe back around.
1643 01:22:30 This guys are, kind of,like, messing with reality.
1644 01:22:35 Amplifying negativityor normalizing negativity.
1645 01:22:39 And I'm doing everything I canin my power
1646 01:22:42 to change the courseof this thing.
1647 01:22:44 And I think removing Pepefrom the hate symbol list,
1648 01:22:47 it would be a win for...
1649 01:22:50 peace.
1650 01:22:59 With all these legal stepsthat I'm taking,
1651 01:23:01 everything I've been doingup until now,
1652 01:23:03 my goal is to get it offthe hate symbol database.
1653 01:23:07 To me, it's not a symbol.
1654 01:23:08 It's a character, you know.
1655 01:23:09 It's the character,
1656 01:23:11 but he's adorned with differentsymbols, you know.
1657 01:23:13 And they're prettyextreme stuff.
1658 01:23:15 I mean, yeah, you know.
1659 01:23:17 It's tough, right? Having iton the hate symbols database,
1660 01:23:20 we have foundto be really useful
1661 01:23:21 for those who are tryingto understand
1662 01:23:23 this barrage of symbolsthat is being thrown at them
1663 01:23:26 whether it's a frog, a meme,or a hand gesture.
1664 01:23:29 - Mm-hmm.-It's complicated.
1665 01:23:31 Well, yeah,it is complicated
1666 01:23:32 because I thinkwith Pepe on the list,
1667 01:23:34 it's seen more as a win for,you know,
1668 01:23:37 the so called alt-rightor these others
1669 01:23:39 because nowthey have that symbol.
1670 01:23:41 You know, this is going to bea lifelong journey for me
1671 01:23:44 'cause I'm going to be entangledwith this character forever.
1672 01:23:46 But what would be the impactof removing it?
1673 01:23:49 Most of these peopleare creating these images
1674 01:23:51 and are going to keep turningthese things out.
1675 01:23:53 Your bottomline request...
1676 01:23:56 It's really not goingto solve the issue.
1677 01:23:57 It's not about this cartoonbeing on the hate symbols list.
1678 01:24:01 And it sucks!
1679 01:24:05 - All right, man.- Thanks a lot.
1680 01:24:06 -Yeah, thank you.-Good luck.
1681 01:24:20 I don't want the narrative
1682 01:24:21 to be like I'm victimized here.
1683 01:24:25 People have to deal with horror on a daily level.
1684 01:24:30 Let's work together, you know.
1685 01:24:32 Let's uh... let's uh...
1686 01:24:36 figure this shit out,'cause, uh...
1687 01:24:39 it's not getting any better,you know.
1688 01:24:43 All of the accountsof what happened to me
1689 01:24:45 and my family over the yearsare enormous in scale
1690 01:24:48 and historically rootedin a legacy of white supremacy.
1691 01:24:51 ♪ This little light of mine
1692 01:24:54 ♪ I'm gonna let it shine
1693 01:24:56 Why?Why are you being provocative?
1694 01:24:57 I like trolling people.It's fun.
1695 01:24:59 You do it for fun.
1696 01:25:00 Yeah, it's fun.
1697 01:25:02 The aesthetics and ideals
1698 01:25:04 that extremistsare promoting online
1699 01:25:06 with their use of Pepe the Frog
1700 01:25:08 are now bleeding completely
1701 01:25:10 into what you would otherwisedescribe as regular people.
1702 01:25:13 Yeah,go ahead and video me now.
1703 01:25:14 I'm videoing you too,motherfucker.
1704 01:25:16 You know what's comingto you people, right?
1705 01:25:18 You know Trumpis just the beginning.
1706 01:25:21 You bearded monkeyshave no place in America.
1707 01:25:25 The ideology is premised
1708 01:25:27 on justifying violencetowards vulnerable people.
1709 01:25:30 USA! USA!
1710 01:25:34 And when that seepsinto the beliefs
1711 01:25:36 of regular Americans,
1712 01:25:38 you're headingfor some place very bad.
1713 01:25:50 You can't put the genieback in the bottle,
1714 01:25:52 but you can send itsomewhere else.
1715 01:25:56 To actually change the narrativeit would be necessary
1716 01:25:59 to take the frog, to take Pepe,
1717 01:26:03 and do something very differentwith him.
1718 01:26:07 Something that could develop...
1719 01:26:09 a meme of its own.
1720 01:26:27 Suddenly, out of nowhere, Pepe is being used in Hong Kong
1721 01:26:30 as a symbol of freedom,democracy, and youth protest.
1722 01:26:34 I was surprisedas much as anyone.
1723 01:26:42 This isthe newer version of him.
1724 01:26:44 He is wearing a hard hat
1725 01:26:45 and he's wearingthe outfit of the protesters.
1726 01:26:48 It was like a wayto resist authoritarianism.
1727 01:26:57 Oh, he was cryingfrom the tear gas.
1728 01:27:01 Pepe is nowbeing spray painted on walls
1729 01:27:03 as a symbol of hope.
1730 01:27:08 Like when does thatactually happened in history?
1731 01:27:10 You see it in moviesall the time.
1732 01:27:12 Like, "This is the symbolwe're all gonna rally behind."
1733 01:27:15 Yeah, this never happensin reality,
1734 01:27:17 except now it happened to Pepe.
1735 01:27:22 Pepe beamsin everyone's brain
1736 01:27:24 this idea of, like,the every man.
1737 01:27:27 As you grow up,you realize that, in fact,
1738 01:27:30 you can affect the world,
1739 01:27:32 and you can use a small lever
1740 01:27:35 to actually movea great amount of weight.
1741 01:27:40 That's the powerthat Pepe has, right? Like...
1742 01:27:44 "Oh, what's more worthlessthan cartoons?"
1743 01:27:47 But like, "What's more powerfulthan Mickey Mouse?"
1744 01:27:50 Right? Like...
1745 01:27:51 One of the most powerful thingsyou can do
1746 01:27:53 is create an iconic cartoon.
1747 01:28:25 In a lotof traditional societies,
1748 01:28:27 it was very standardto look for omens.
1749 01:28:31 Signs, strange portents, things that were not expected
1750 01:28:35 that suddenly cameout of the blue.
1751 01:28:37 Because that was a warning
1752 01:28:39 something was shiftingin society,
1753 01:28:40 something had gone wrong,
1754 01:28:42 or there was something building
1755 01:28:43 that you need to know aboutbefore it arrived.
1756 01:28:47 Pepe the frog is an omen.
1757 01:28:49 We need to listen
1758 01:28:51 because it's not goingto go away...
1759 01:28:53 until we hear the messagethat it has to say.
1760 01:29:03 Nowadays,I've just been thinking
1761 01:29:05 about this concept of a spiral.
1762 01:29:08 Life unfolding in this kindof spirally nature.
1763 01:29:14 So, I've been drawingin more kind of circular ways.
1764 01:29:19 I think that there is kind ofa collective consciousness
1765 01:29:22 of darkness and light.
1766 01:29:25 And the only thingthat seems true to me
1767 01:29:28 is that everythingis going to change.
1768 01:29:30 Like, Trump is not goingto always be the president.
1769 01:29:34 You know, Planet Earth isn'talways gonna have people on it.
1770 01:29:37 You know, who knows?
1771 01:29:40 The positive notionof Pepe
1772 01:29:41 is the possibilitythat you can change again.
1773 01:29:52 Hard core happy place.
1774 01:29:54 You got to go hardcore happy.
1775 01:30:03 I still like drawing him.
1776 01:30:05 I go through waves, like,
1777 01:30:06 I think last timeI talked to you, Arthur,
1778 01:30:09 I was sick of him.
1779 01:30:10 But now,I like drawing him again.