Well, I still don't know other meaning to this frog. First time I saw it was a "sad feeling" meme in a forum, just this.
Now I'm searching for info, to avoid misunderstandings.
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Are Pepe avatars considered normal and fine in online games?
- Thread starter flyinj
- Start date
Well, I still don't know other meaning to this frog. First time I saw it was a "sad feeling" meme in a forum, just this.
Now I'm searching for info, to avoid misunderstandings.
Yup, me too. I thought it was just a dumb frog meme. News to me that the "OK" symbol is apparently bad, too.
Like most Alt-Right symbols, Pepe preys on the idea of plausible deniability and relies on taking an otherwise normal symbol or meme and using it for something perverse. It simultaneously allows them to hide behind a veil of plausible deniability while also giving them a "dunk on liberals" moment when communities like us get our knickers in a twist over a "simple frog image" or a dumb clown emoji. The KKK has been using similar tactics for literal decades with coded messaging like "1488" and "HH".
This is just my hot take that I know plenty of people will disagree with, but I think that the best combat against this type of trolling is to deny these groups the ability to co-opt these symbols and images in the first place and then deny their trolling by ignoring bad faith actors and low effort trolls. I think we often signal boost a lot of these fringe communities when we elevate their idiocy with pointless internet articles and armchair theory crafting. These groups grow quickest when the media and larger internet communities give them free advertising by discussing low effort trolling ad nauseum. Isolated individuals on the internet are incredibly attracted to these forms of trolling, there's a reason why actual extremist groups target these demographics.
Destiny broke a lot of this down far more eloquently than I can in his stream discussing how edgy humor is a gateway drug for these people into actual, legitimate extremism.
This is just my hot take that I know plenty of people will disagree with, but I think that the best combat against this type of trolling is to deny these groups the ability to co-opt these symbols and images in the first place and then deny their trolling by ignoring bad faith actors and low effort trolls. I think we often signal boost a lot of these fringe communities when we elevate their idiocy with pointless internet articles and armchair theory crafting. These groups grow quickest when the media and larger internet communities give them free advertising by discussing low effort trolling ad nauseum. Isolated individuals on the internet are incredibly attracted to these forms of trolling, there's a reason why actual extremist groups target these demographics.
Destiny broke a lot of this down far more eloquently than I can in his stream discussing how edgy humor is a gateway drug for these people into actual, legitimate extremism.
They are officially banned in the Overwatch League by Blizzard. Seems like ResetEra and Activision-Blizzard make that already at least 2 places. Probably several thousand more.
Probably some % of them are people who just "don't know" (or more likely, don't care about hurting people, but arent part of this specific hateful ideology,) but are you really surprised that the European Sword Fight game on Steam has a notable alt right fanbase?
You see, this what I don't get, how something not created by the alt-rigth can suddenly be "claimed" by them? The creator actually fight for it to not be used by them, right?
We all love the cuphead artstyle, and even knowing it was created as a racist caricature, we are smart enough to understand that the studio MD is not racist.
They were also carying Tiki torches. Are Tiki torches equivalent to swastikas?
This begs the question: what is the correct way to counter this? It seems like a frustratingly bulletproof strategy...
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If it weren't for Era I wouldn't even know Pepe was a politically charged thing at all. I'd figure it was just another meme. I don't think that it's commonly known as a hate symbol outside of certain online communities. I suppose that is a factor on why it's still allowed on some services.
I wouldn't ban them, makes it easier to figure out who is a cunt and who isn't, this thread has been useful for that.
That's all it is?
Just curious, but do you follow the news at all? Politics? Do you spend a lot of time in Twitch chat? Trying to understand.
The successful counter is to hold them forcefully accountable for their actions and reject their obviously disingenuous plausible deniability. This trick only works if you have a grade-school level of social skills and can't tell that the shitty alt right people have obviously co-opted the thing, and realize that any "it's just a normal symbol" claims are extremely obvious lies.
It has been very successful with pepe, aside from a bunch of dorks in this thread deciding to play right into it and try to gaslight the rest.
Pepe is still quite normal and business-as-usual on Twitch, even among the most innocuous of streamers, so it really feels like much of this alt-right connection brouhaha has blown over. So much pepega and pepehands still, you'd likely never know of the weird controversy Pepe was involved in unless you watched OWL or get your news from old media and clickbait blogs, the latter two of which are largely staffed with people who had never seen a Pepe until the 2016 presidential election and didn't know what to make of it.
I'd argue that 90% of non US user have no clue what you are talking about, especially about the hand thing
I'm part of a headphone community, most of which are people from South-East Asia. They use Pepe emoticons and when I questioned about them some of them were very surprised and shocked that it is, or has become, a symbol for white supremacy. They just use it as I'd use a :P emoji, or when someone says something ironic/questionable.
From my perspective, it's very weird to see it being used with such an intent, and it slightly alerts me whenever I see it because I expect an ulterior motive or message behind it whenever I see it.
Contrapoints pointed out in one of her more videos that there are many more symbols and emojis that white-supremacists use as a way to signal their intent and stance to other white-supremacists, like the "ok-hand" emoji, so I'm not entirely sure if it would be effective or make a big difference to ban that meme's avatars.
I completely agree that intolerance needs to be combated whenever we see it, but I'm just not sure if going after specific emojis and avatars would help immensely but honestly speaking, I don't have a better proposition for the issue.
From my perspective, it's very weird to see it being used with such an intent, and it slightly alerts me whenever I see it because I expect an ulterior motive or message behind it whenever I see it.
Contrapoints pointed out in one of her more videos that there are many more symbols and emojis that white-supremacists use as a way to signal their intent and stance to other white-supremacists, like the "ok-hand" emoji, so I'm not entirely sure if it would be effective or make a big difference to ban that meme's avatars.
I completely agree that intolerance needs to be combated whenever we see it, but I'm just not sure if going after specific emojis and avatars would help immensely but honestly speaking, I don't have a better proposition for the issue.
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Pepe has been all over the news in Belgium. Most recently with the rise of an alt-right youth organization.
This thread reminds me of the Sinterklaas situation. Half of us screaming 'It's just a tradition! A children's holiday!'
Yeah, these "people outside of the us wouldn't know" people are almost universally either alt right trolls or clowns who have never read the news in any country. White supremacy is a nearly worldwide ideology, and these symbols have been used by prominent racists the world over.
Well, Twitch is the only place where I've seen it used, so yea. I don't have Discord so not sure what it's used for in there.
I can't help but think less of someone who uses it, even if their usage of it is innocent. I see it pop up in Twitch or somewhere else every now and then and it always makes me raise my eyebrows. In theory I appreciate the idea of fighting back against the alt right by "reclaiming it" even though I personally disagree with it and would rather see it die off
I mean, you honestly think that if someone has a Pepe avatar there isn't a very good chance they're a cunt? Have a glance at twitter or something, pretty much 1:1.
Nah i don't think you realize that it's not broad knowledge as you think it is
This is true Twitch as a whole doesn't seem to even remember them trying to make it an alt-right thing.
We locked down our game's discord and had explicit rules against offensive emotes, including pepe, in our stream chats. As far as I'm concerned pepe has no place in any sort of official communication channel (or polite conversation of any sort for that matter).
Some of my closest friends who I know for a fact are not cunts enjoy a good monkaS every now and then. It is not common knowledge that cunts have tried to adopt it.
Anyone who says otherwise is honestly in denial/arguing in bad faith.
Pretty much this.
If you feel angry when you see it, they won.. you want to ban it, they win... all the while it's just literally a random thing that was chosen one day, by some random person on a fringe part of the internet were like, "you know what'd be funny? we'll take the okay symbol and use it a bunch and people will start to associate it with racists and get angry at that when they see it; but the vast majority beyond them will think they're being absurd for reacting to something seemingly innocuous." Meanwhile you don't even know if the person who pitched the idea was racist or not, or simply likes seeing chaos implode.
It all started out as a mindfuck/laugh generating exercise.
OP
OP
For all these people so concerned that "if we let them have Pepe, who knows what they'll take next! Maybe Batman!":
Pepe is arguably the most popular meme generated from 4chan. Yes, I know Pepe was from a webcomic, but 4chan is where they took the character and heavily circulated it as a meme. It was a comic frog plucked from an obscure web comic and appropriated by the community. It was a kind of "inside joke" of 4chan that blew up from there.
The reason that Pepe emerged as an alt-right symbol is because it is from 4chan, and all the racist assholes who identify proudly with the toxic culture that exists there. It is almost like the 4chan flag.
The alt-right didn't just grab it out of the blue. The symbol marinated for years in the disgusting cesspool of 4chan.
Batman wasn't plucked out of obscurity and created as an inside joke on a largely racist internet message board.
So you can stop panicking that if you accept that Pepe is a racist symbol then everything else is at risk.
Pepe is arguably the most popular meme generated from 4chan. Yes, I know Pepe was from a webcomic, but 4chan is where they took the character and heavily circulated it as a meme. It was a comic frog plucked from an obscure web comic and appropriated by the community. It was a kind of "inside joke" of 4chan that blew up from there.
The reason that Pepe emerged as an alt-right symbol is because it is from 4chan, and all the racist assholes who identify proudly with the toxic culture that exists there. It is almost like the 4chan flag.
The alt-right didn't just grab it out of the blue. The symbol marinated for years in the disgusting cesspool of 4chan.
Batman wasn't plucked out of obscurity and created as an inside joke on a largely racist internet message board.
So you can stop panicking that if you accept that Pepe is a racist symbol then everything else is at risk.
If it was Pepe designed by Matt Furie, it would be different. Sadly, most of the Twitch emotes you see are Pepe designs that originated from 4chan. While it's overblown to say every single Twitch user that has a Pepe avatar or uses a Pepe emote is a racist, I just ignore and not interact with them at all. Unfortunately, Twitch can't do anything about it so it's an eyesore, for sure.
You're forgetting the history of racist iconography. Do you know Mac Tonight? If not, I suggest you look it up. Anything can "become" a hate symbol if you let it.
Marinating at a place has nothing to do with what ends up being a symbol of hate.
The swastika is a religious and cultural symbol in the South Asian community that's used even today on a daily basis and had been for centuries. The only context it had before the Nazis were about positivity and goodwill. Yet it's not a hate symbol. So yea...anything can be taken and made into a hate symbol.
I cant attest for your friends but can see why you've been so defensive in this thread if that's the case.
The only reason I know of any of this (I had to Google 'monkaS') is because of how it is used by whack jobs on the internet, it's not arguing in bad faith to suggest others are or should be aware of this use. None of this internet bollocks is 'common knowledge' so it's not the strongest argument to make.
Also, RE the 'common knowledge/bad faith' argument, everyone i see using this things on social media are unequivocally weirdo political types and not people trying to talk about video games (unless it's the ethics of their journalists).
I think it's quite poor form to suggest anyone that doesn't agree with you or thinks your friends might be cunts is arguing in bad faith.
this is insulting. for one thing there is no white supremacy in my country, because there are hardly "white" people.
I feel the same, if someone is sharing symbols like Pepe then at the very least they're wading waist deep in those murky waters to a point where they feel it's normalised. It's hard to ever accept the usage when at best it's a provocative symbol and a sign of the company kept.
In the case of children using it I think it's further evidence of the sort of bad examples set by influencers and online communities on impressionable minds.
Here's something. Majority of the population (as in more than half) on this planet live their lives without interacting with a single white person. It's arrogant to think issues regarding/relating to white people are so important that everyone in the world must/should know about them.
I'm from India but I live in the UK now and I had no idea Pepe and ok hand emotes were alt right symbols until now. The connection between the two seems so random that I never knew about it, and yes I do read the news and I did know about Charlottesville.
Well I don't disagree that everyone deserves to atleast be aware of the history of the meme, I do think its wrong to label anyone a cunt purely for using it for the simple fact they just don't know. We can't guarantee that everyone on the internet knows its history.
and just to clarify my earlier statement re bad faith arguing; I meant anyone who believes it is common knowledge that pepe is used as a hate symbol, is arguing in bad faith, thats all.
I live in North-East Scotland, my friends are oblivious to US politics (many claim the rise of pepe being a hate symbol was from Trumps 2016 campaign), I only learned of its troubled history last year, here on ERA in a thread very similar to this one. This is exactly why it is unfair to casually label people that grossly over a meme.
Same mate, been using PepeHands for ages for sad moments in gaming with friends without being aware of this 8 pages I'm reading now, same with ok sign on WhatsApp, I'm actually super confused atm lol.
How people on here don't know about the connections to white supremacist surprise me, considering how much coverage they have got on here over the last few years.
Feels like you would have to actively avoid threads about politics etc to have missed it.
The amount of random shit I have read about on here that have nothing to do with my daily life or country yet some people seemingly miss common threads is weird.
Feels like you would have to actively avoid threads about politics etc to have missed it.
The amount of random shit I have read about on here that have nothing to do with my daily life or country yet some people seemingly miss common threads is weird.
But most people are completely ignorant about all that alt right crap associated with Pepe. Specially in my country where a lot of people don't even speak english, and many of those who do surely will not search for any news related to this.
I only read about this stuff here on Era, just to give you an example.
To many people it's just an emote, and in essence it's really only an emote regardless of who "adopted" it.
As someone said here, no one raises flags with a green weird frog in it.
I do. Most of the threads about politics don't grab my attention because they're about stuff unrelated to my country's politics. Some stuff here don't even make sense when viewed from my perspective.
