Pepe soon became pretty popular on messaging boards. One such place was 4chan - a popular, anonymous, image-based messaging board.
At the time, 4chan had 7 million monthly visitors.
{% hint style="info" %} Fun fact: 4chan was created by Christopher Poole when he was just 14 years old. {% endhint %}
The way 4chan is structured was perfect for creating memes - posts that get most replies rise to the top, while those ignored sink to the bottom. A "darwinian competition for attention".
“In that little bathroom story, Pepe is like this weird guy. And that moment of owning your weirdness, that’s perfect 4chan ethics.” - Dale Beran, artist and author of “4chan: The Skeleton Key to the Rise of Trump”
Most 4chan users by this time did not even know who Matt Furie was or that Pepe came from the “Boy’s Club” comic. For them, Pepe was 4chans’ creation.
“I post Pepe all the time. To not post Pepe would be strange, because it’s THE meme.” - 4chaner
Pepe's elasticity made is possible for folks to easily relate to the meme, but also for Pepe to be easily absorbed into 4chans’ depressed energy and world-view.
20 January 2009 - an edited version featuring a distraught-looking Pepe with the caption "Feels Bad Man" or “You will never X” began circulating as a reaction image on 4chan.
This led to the birth of “Pepe the sad frog”.
Users started creating their own versions of Pepe and showcasing having them having interactions with him. They even made a character to represent them interacting with Pepe - Wojak, the “Feels Guy”.
Wojak is an illustration of a bald man with a sad expression on his face. The character was mostly used for expressing unpleasant feelings by 4chaners.
“It was like a group therapy, on the internet. When I was feeling anxious, I'd post to 4chan and 10 minutes later I would get messages telling me that I was the most hideous man alive, a social freak, a reject. I would wear that as a badge of honor. I’d be like: “Yes. I’m a true 4chaner.” - Mills, 4chaner
Pepe the Frog was being “hijacked” by 4chan.
Dr. Aleks Krotoski, psychologist and author of “Untangling the Web” became very fascinated by this "Pepe phenomenon" at the time.
She believes that Pepe, and in particular this sad version of him, grew in popularity as a reaction to the “my perfect life” narrative often presented by users on platforms like Instagram and Facebook at the time.
This was the time when Instagram boomed. Everyone was getting online and another darwinian competition for attention started on these platforms - the "perfect lifestyle" competition.
A new market of "lifestyle selling" started gaining traction online. The term "influencer" rose in publicity, both good and bad. It sparked a huge trend, a trend which never really went away, rather became a norm.
“For a huge population, both online and offline, we weren't really allowed to express sorrow or sadness or grief. And this sad little frog arrives online in the midst of the push to commodify the Internet.” - Dr. Krotoski
With the number of internet users growing, Pepe was ripe for the taking.
Other communities outside of 4chan started percolating Pepe. He started getting the attention which the 4chan community did not like.
.png)
Even some celebrities like Nicki Minaj and Katy Perry jumped on the Pepe-trend and posted him on their profiles, further increasing his popularity amongst "the normies”.
In the eyes of the 4chan community, they were stealing Pepe.
Eventually, all of these other internet users flocked to 4chan, as they perceived it as the birthplace of pepe memes. However, they were not welcomed wholeheartedly.
The 4chan community revolted.
“It was really serious for a lot of people. This was the symbol of our culture. And they were stealing it. And they were coming to the only place we felt safe from them -4chan.” - Mills, 4chaner
At the same time, while all of this drama was culminating online, Matt was launching an official Pepe clothing line - PePe Official. It didn't end well.
As a way of revolting against the unwelcomed outsiders, the 4chan community started creating angry and offensive versions of Pepe the Frog, some more distasteful than others.
This was the birth of “The Angry Frog” meme, inspired by popular videos of screaming frogs that went viral at the time.
They gradually became more offensive, in an attempt to make the “intruders” leave 4chan.
The idea behind these offensive memes was that if they make them so offensive they won’t get "stolen by the normies”.
They would put swastikas on Pepe, Nazi-fy him, make him look as offensive as possible or say the most offensive stuff they could think of.
Things began to escalate in the 4chan sphere.
Pictures of pepe holding guns, shooting, self-harming and doing other things in a similar anti-social, destructive manner became the norm on 4chan.
This was their way of expressing their anger towards society.
They would often joke about the idea of all of the 4chan community arming themselves and starting a revolution, which they called “The Beta Uprising”.
It was always coated in irony, but behind the irony was small, uncanny level of seriousness.
A thread was posted on 4chan after the Oregon massacre in October 2016, essentially memefying the violence and destruction caused by the massacre.
A picture of Pepe in a mask holding a gun was posted on the thread and that same picture was posted a day before the massacre.
“It’s not just the memes that generate the violence. It’s also that the violence becomes a meme.” - Joel Finkelstein, director at “Network Contagion Research Institute”.
One of the outcomes from this period was the creation of what was called “Smug Pepe”.
Donald Trump was seen as a personification of the “Smug pepe” meme.
Trump resonated with the 4chan community as someone that isn’t liked by almost anyone.
“People in his own party, they don’t like him. The other party didn’t like him. No one liked him. It was perfect trolling accessory.” - Mills, 4chaner
Quickly after that, the first versions of Trump Pepes began circulating.
The 4chan community then started creating Trump memes and began sharing them outside of 4chan, eventually trying to get Trump elected as a way of revolting against the world.
Essentially, the 4chan community wanted to embarrass the “outside world” by electing Trump.
On October 13th, 2015, Donald Trump tweeted an illustration of Pepe as himself standing at a podium with the President of the United States Seal. This was the seal of approval for the 4chan community.
.jpg)
“To most voters this seemed odd. But if you were spending years creating Pepe memes and you saw this, you were probably like “Wow, maybe this guy is right for us.”” - Matt Braynard, execute director of "Look Ahead America" and director of strategy and data for the Trump campaign
The tweet went viral and even major news outlets like CNN reported on the phenomenon. Pepe the Frog has become Trump's invisible running mate.
Furie tried to clearly define his enigmatic brain child, once and for all, in this comic on The Nib titled “Pepe: An Explainer".
He was unsuccessful.