Pepe and the AOK gesture feel unsalvageable. Are red caps redeemable?

[Deleted member 179]

Frequenting discord shows that Pepe is already redeemed. He doesn't even bother me anymore.

I still use AOK subconsciously, they don't get to take that.

Red hats do make me double take but most ball caps are sports teams and most sports teams have red caps, it'll fade. I'm in St Louis, Cardinals hats are an every day occurance.

 

[onpoint]

I miss when a red hat just meant we called someone "Fred Durst" all night. Simpler times.

 

[Clowns]

Fuck surrendering the OK hand.

 

[Sayuz]

Pepe went through a rough phase for a few years, but he came out the other side alright.

 

[IMCaprica]

The internet took Pepe back, and AOK was never truly taken, because the people flashing the white power sign are so blatantly obvious about it that there's rarely a moment when you wouldn't know which is which.

 

[Deleted member 21709]

I can't not suspect anyone that uses it. :/

 

[Deleted member 19533]

I don't know what corner of the internet you all are seeing pepe salvaged

Every time I see him turn up it's still sus as hell

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That sounds more like a you thing. I remember when I found out about it. I had to go out of my way to find what people were talking about. It's definitely not the norm.

 

[Einchy]

when they call you unsalvageable

 

[Deleted member 23893]

I miss when a red hat just meant we called someone "Fred Durst" all night. Simpler times.

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TBH this is still the first thing I think of whenever I see a red cap from the back.

 

[StrangerDanger]

Due to lots of sports teams using the color red, i always see so many red hats. So i never assume its a MAGA hat until i read it.

 

[Grug]

On a similar vein, The Gadsen Flag and the "Unite or Die" flags are irredeemable aren't they?

The Tea Party didn't quite completely kill them off, but the MAGA patriots dealt the killer blow.

It's a shame, because they are badass and rousing as fuck in their original historical context.

 

[Laser Ramon]

It's still weird that Pepe is just a character in this one weird comic that you can just buy on Amazon

 

[Uncle at Nintendo]

On a similar vein, The Gadsen Flag and the "Unite or Die" flags are irredeemable aren't they?

The Tea Party didn't quite completely kill them off, but the MAGA patriots dealt the killer blow.

It's a shame, because they are badass and rousing as fuck in their original historical context.

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I don't think people look a Gadsen flags the same way they do as Confederate flags.

 

[iRAWRasaurus]

Interesting enough from someone I talked to in japan, the buddhist symbol that the nazis ( left or counter clockwise I don't know if it was a specific name) took is becoming more popular among the younger gen. Of course it has no references to the nazis for them.

 

[Pepito]

when they call you unsalvageable

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defend peepo at all costs

 

[Grug]

I don't think people look a Gadsen flags the same way they do as Confederate flags.

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As a history teacher with a hard-on for revolutions, it's a stunning and powerful symbol in its proper context. Thanks to the last 10-12 years though, if I was to put it on my wall at home I'd be very sure to surround it with other symbols that establish my social-democratic credibility ;)

 

[PBalfredo]

On a similar vein, The Gadsen Flag and the "Unite or Die" flags are irredeemable aren't they?

The Tea Party didn't quite completely kill them off, but the MAGA patriots dealt the killer blow.

It's a shame, because they are badass and rousing as fuck in their original historical context.

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They might be fine once a good amount of time has passed since their historical context will endure longer than the context of some chuds waving it around some Qanon rallies.

Now the Thin Blue Line flag, that's radioactive forever.

 

[SigSig]

Pepe has long been reclaimed in form of Peepo. At this point he gets used around a billion time a second for non-sinister non-alt-right cheering on Twitch and maybe once every few years as an alt-right dogwhistle. Ofc Era wouldn't know, because y'all are perpetually stuck like 4 years ago.
The OK-Sign is cool, too. Someone has "🥛🐸👌 find me on gab! Qnow thy enemy…" in their twitter bio? Yeah they are nazis but also even more out of touch than Era is.
They didn't appropriate shit.

 

[Ryan.]

When OP thinks you can no longer be used for good

 

[Grug]

When OP thinks you can no longer be used for good

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Hehe, I've edited my OP to flag that I may have misread the current State of the Pepe.

 

[Squarehard]

 

[Trisc]

I hope so, for the sake my roommate and his awesome Fatal Fury ballcap.

As for Pepe and the OK sign, those have been fine for ages. If we didn't have OK signs, what would scuba divers do?

 

[Something Creative]

Ofc Era wouldn't know, because y'all are perpetually stuck like 4 years ago.

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Yeah they are nazis but also even more out of touch than Era is.

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....what? The thread is filled with people saying exactly what you are.

 

[TinTuba47]

Maybe it's an overreaction, but I don't ever plan on wearing a red cap for the rest of my life

 

[Tukarrs]

Pepe's almost completely rehabilitated.

The OK hand gesture is still incredibly suspect to me. Unless it makes sense in context, I'm going to have suspicions for it. The deflection that it's the punching game is stupid, because we all know they're not punching people after they take a photo.

 

[MarioW]

I have owned a single cap for the last 10 years or so, close enough to MAGA red. I'm all the way in NZ and I still feel self conscious wearing it. When trying to hide my lockdown hair on video calls and wearing it, I would scooch down and tilt my camera to make it clear it wasn't a MAGA cap when talking to partners in the US.

I'll still wear it but just bought a white and baby blue cap to be able to mix things up.

 

[Deleted member 45617]

Pepe was rampantly used everywhere all over the internet no matter what your background, and has been used against the alt-right so thats salvageable

AOK was also a universally used thing, they've failed to appropriate it because the vast majority of regular people using it even today probably have got no clue it was being used as an alt-right symbol.

Bright red hats with white writing though? They wont be fashionable for a long time.

Red Hat Linux are probably thanking their lucky stars that their logo was a fedora

 

[Soliloquy of a Dogge]

I don't know what corner of the internet you all are seeing pepe salvaged

Every time I see him turn up it's still sus as hell

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Every example I've seen in this thread has been gaming or gaming community related and we already know how problematic and regressive the gaming community is so I'm not convinced either.

Then again, it's not a meme I've ever really cared to keep tabs on so...

 

[TDLink]

I don't think there's anything wrong with red caps in general, it is the "Make America Great Again" Red caps specifically. Like, for example, my father is not at all a Trump supporter but is Canadian and has a red Canada flag hat that he has loved for at least a decade. I'm not going to tell him he should stop wearing that, or that wearing it is somehow suspicious/lumping him in with the alt-right.

 

[Harry Potter Obama]

Pepe is hugely popular in mainstream video game fandoms. Definitely not 'unsalvageable.'

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Yeah, the majority of people outside certain internet bubbles don't think of Pepe or the OK symbol as alt-right. By deciding they are, you're basically giving it to them.
The OK symbol in particular is definitely more recognizable as the "gotcha" sign, at least in the US.

 

[Djalminha]

Your context is too narrow. Most of the world don't even know what you're talking about with the ok sign, it still just means ok to us. Think of the N word, half of the world uses it normally as it just means black to them even though in some countries it's ultra wrong to say outloud.

 

[PBalfredo]

Every example I've seen in this thread has been gaming or gaming community related and we already know how problematic and regressive the gaming community is so I'm not convinced either.

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Exactly. Everyone here is waving it off all like "I see him in Twitch chat all the time".

Oh? Well, if it's Twitch chat, then surely it's all fine. Nothing suspect ever comes out of Twitch chat.

 

[Khamsinvera]

The Gadsen flag is so cool and an awesome part of US history ... really need that one back.

 

[Kapryov]

I don't know, red caps still give me a moment of disgust. It will take a while for that to fade I think.

 

[Deleted member 45617]

Your context is too narrow. Most of the world don't even know what you're talking about with the ok sign, it still just means ok to us.

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Anecdotal, but I can say I've seen the OK emoji being used countless times in instant messaging and not once has it been related to politics

 

[King Alamat]

 

[balohna]

If there's a clock in the hat and it says "Time For Chili", sure.

 

[mattiewheels]

 

[xir]

Feel like aok could come back. I don't know how much like kids on the playground still use it and stuff but I knew people way into watching the trump bullshit and didn't know the aok jntjl
Like 2020

 

[Jotakori]

I don't think any of them are irredeemable, and with more time the associations will lessen.

Pepe still gives me gut reaction red flag feelings, but I have friends who use it and I know the original artist has pushed back real hard against that connection, plus seeing the response here solidifies in my mind that it'll continue to move away from being an alt-right symbol. The A-OK hand on its own will forever just be that Pacha / Emperor's New Groove meme to me and the alt-right bullshit ain't gonna change that -- however context matters. Like... if I see some dude doing it 'subtly' in a photo -- against his leg or on a wall or something, that is 100% obviously an alt-right sign. Nobody uses it that way except them, so I don't think it makes the hand symbol in general a problem. And the hat I really expect to fade out of fashion in another 5-10 years, maybe. Like 'Make America Great Again' is 100% tainted forever, but red hats? Nah. It may make you gut-clench now, but fashion is especially fickle and red ball caps have so many other associations I just really do not think the MAGA one is gonna stick for all that long. I expect it to maybe flare up again if Trump tries to run again, but that it'll otherwise die with him.

 

[Deleted member 7082]

Exactly. Everyone here is waving it off all like "I see him in Twitch chat all the time".

Oh? Well, if it's Twitch chat, then surely it's all fine. Nothing suspect ever comes out of Twitch chat.

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You are trying to imagine what people mean when they say its part of twitch culture, and aren't getting it.

It's not some thing that people see in chat and just handwave away as harmless. It is very much ingrained in the culture and parlance of Twitch. And it wasn't a reclamation, it just never went away. Same thing in Discord, in part due to its close ties to Twitch culture, and also because emojis are huge on discord and Pepe/pepo/peepo/etc have always been very popular templates for emoji.

I don't see where the straw man of "nothing suspect ever comes out of Twitch chat" comes into play.

 

[GamerJM]

I actually feel completely opposite of this. I think Pepe and the Ok hand are salvageable but I think I'll probably associate red hats with MAGA for a really long time. I don't necessarily think they'll always be that way but it'll be hard to not think of them as that as time goes on.

 

[Setsune]

I don't know what corner of the internet you all are seeing pepe salvaged

Every time I see him turn up it's still sus as hell

Click to shrink...

Yeah, OP was right pre-edit. I'm not saying people don't use it unknowingly, but the spread of it is due to the crossover of audiences, some big streamers adopting it (and encouraging people to use BetterTTV so they can use the "good" memes, which Twitch has turned a blind eye to), which basically fed the symbol into a wider sphere. Some people claim it's "lost its meaning", etc, but you could've used anything, and yet you're standing your ground on the weird green frog Richard Spencer literally talked about being adopted as a symbol of his white supremacist friends before getting famously getting slugged in his racist face.

I get some people don't know, I really do (it's hard to find gaming Discords that don't have some variant in their emotes). But it's immediately off-putting and makes for a bad first impression when you're slinging around the mascot of the Alt-Right, especially if you know better and are going to make excuses like "It's okay now because it's so diluted." Stop making excuses if you know better.

 

[Deleted member 21709]

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Ok, that's cool.

 

[StraySheep]

Y'all might say Pepe is salvaged but personally I never want to see that frog again. And the redemption story does nothing for me.

 

[Messofanego]

Your context is too narrow. Most of the world don't even know what you're talking about with the ok sign, it still just means ok to us. Think of the N word, half of the world uses it normally as it just means black to them even though in some countries it's ultra wrong to say outloud.

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Don't think non-black people saying N word anywhere is normal, it just means there are a lot of racists out there. It's wrong to say in all countries, it's just backlash and consequences are on differing levels.

 

[Atom Heart Mother]

Stop to, conceding to the alt right every stupid thing they try to co opt.

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this. please. you guys make it really easy for them.

 

[PBalfredo]

You are trying to imagine what people mean when they say its part of twitch culture, and aren't getting it.

It's not some thing that people see in chat and just handwave away as harmless. It is very much ingrained in the culture and parlance of Twitch. And it wasn't a reclamation, it just never went away. Same thing in Discord, in part due to its close ties to Twitch culture, and also because emojis are huge on discord and Pepe/pepo/peepo/etc have always been very popular templates for emoji.

I don't see where the straw man of "nothing suspect ever comes out of Twitch chat" comes into play.

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Saying that use of Pepe never went away, even as it became a symbol of the alt right, is exactly why I still side-eye the use of Pepe. Especially since many of the spaces that kept on trucking with pepe are ones where a lot of shit came out. The larger gaming community is where gamergate came out of, after all, so business as usual in those spaces can't be taken for granted as benign.

 

[Kaseoki]

All of these are used without issue outside of the US.

 

[DevilMayGuy]

I'm not sure that either of those examples are nearly as bad as OP thinks. I think that especially the OK gesture being a nazi thing as a first impression is an extremely online take. In basically every normal situation outside of 15 neckbeards in tacticool kevlar doing it in unison, I don't think I've ever had a moment of indecision regarding the motives behind that gesture.

Also pepe is used all over the place not in a racist context