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[frogs croaking]
[croaking continues]
[somber music]
[pen cap clicking]
[pen rasping]
[croaking]
[Matt] I always first start with the eyeball like this,
and you gotta leave a little bit of space there for the goo.
His little froggie eyelids.
That looks like sex parts a little bit.
[marker rasping]
[Matt] I've just always been into drawing.
And it takes tons of time to come up with a character
that you like enough to draw over and over again.
It's just been kind of a slow drip of frogs
throughout my entire life.
[Matt]It's just one little frog after another,
after another, after another.
And then eventually, it was Pepe.
[birds chirping]
[Matt] It's a happy little frog.
[interviewer] What do people get wrong about drawing Pepe?
[Matt] Um...
Probably when they put Pepe on the Internet saying, like,
"Kill Jews."
[upbeat music]
Are you familiar with this meme called Pepe the Frog?
[Stephen] Okay, so for those who don't,
here's the thing. Here's Pepe the Frog, okay?
Have you seen, you know, this frog meme?
Uh, forgot the name of it.
Many of you may remember Pepe the Frog who once...
♪ I saw a man today
♪ He led a big parade Downtown ♪
♪ And the doctor came
♪ He stands aside Talking down ♪
♪ Hey
♪ It sounds like
I bet 90% of your viewers haven't heard of Pepe the Frog.
[Trump Jr] I thought it was a frog in a wig.
[woman #1] The white supremacist movement
has taken over Pepe the Frog!
♪ 'Cause I've been really
♪ I've been in love with you
[overlapping dialogue]
[mouse clicking]
[beeping]
[upbeat music]
[screaming]
♪ I've been in love
♪ With you
[screams]
♪ I've been in love
♪ With you
[girl panting]
[footsteps rustling]
[both chuckle]
[Matt] We're here in the community thrift store,
and, uh, it all started here.
Ooh, let's see what's back here.
[Matt] I do get, like, waves of nostalgia
for the youthful time in my 20s working here,
just hanging out with my friends, and...
just riding a bike around San Francisco.
So...
I basically just want to be young again.
[man chuckles] Guess what.
[Matt] This is my old office space here.
It used to be the toy department.
This is where I spent my days.
-With... -[Elmo giggling]
That tickles.
...guys like that.
[Matt] I would have literally a mountain of toys every day,
and it was just really inspiring.
It's like working inside of a brain.
If I got caught up with my work, I would just draw.
Every day would be, like, new toys that would come in
and I would draw them, and so...
It was my ideal job situation.
[Aiyana]Matt was always drawing that frog forever, I swear.
That was his go-to thing to draw,
so I've been seeing that frog's face...
for as long as I've known Matt.
[sneezes]
-[Aiyana] Ew! -[giggles]
-Ew! Ew, ew, ew. -Excuse you.
[Aiyana giggles]
[Matt] I mean, the first time I actually named him Pepe
was for this comics that I did called Playtime.
I was just messing around on Microsoft Paint
and came up with Pepe and Brett.
Two characters.
They did things like go to raves and paint.
[keyboard clacking]
[Matt] It just kind of naturally developed.
And then I just thought
it would be fun to have four characters,
kinda like the Ninja Turtles.
[Matt] It became Boy's Club.
A lot of the humor is kind of about post-college zone.
You don't quite know what you're doing,
but you like drinking and hanging out.
The four characters were just reflections
of my personality
and the personality of my friends.
Landwolf, the party dog,
Andy was the jokester of the group,
Brett liked to dance,
and then Pepe the Frog was just kinda like
the little brother of the group.
[clicking, beeping]
[Chris] The better I got to know Matt,
the more, kind of, similarities I saw with him and Pepe.
Even the way Pepe looks,
like he kinda, like, looks like Matt a little bit.
[chuckles]
[Johnny] Matt was a little bit different
from what most people would consider
a typical cartoonist.
I think it's more like this.
Mm-hmm. [chuckles]
Button down shirt, nerd glasses.
[Johnny] He seem like he was, like, a cool guy.
And Boy's Club,
it's one of the funniest comics of,
I don't know, the last ten years.
What's happening here is Landwolf is passed out,
but that's like how he passed out.
Like, he didn't quite make it onto the bed.
[Chris] I don't know why, I thought he was trying
to jerk off and he passed out, like while he was...
[Matt] Oh, I see.
Yeah.
[Chris] I guess it's open for interpretation, huh?
It is open for interpretation.
Landwolf, I think he kind of represents
the kind of hairy, gross roommate
that you have sometimes.
[Aiyana] Kinda clogging the drains.
It just made me think of our actual roommate, Chris.
Issues.
[munching]
[Matt] It's weird talking about these
because they're meant to be read in the privacy of your own home.
[Chris and Matt laughing]
I never actually had to explain any of this shit.
[Matt laughs]
[Lisa] I met Matt at a comics convention
where we're signing next to each other.
I loved Matt's comics.
I grew up with an older brother
so I already had that sense of humor
where I liked, you know, boner jokes and barf and farts.
-[farts] -[beeps]
[Lisa] To me, it felt very accessible.
Like, it's the sort of masculinity
where you can be in your underwear
singing to Shania Twain.
♪ Oh, oh, oh, go totally crazy
♪ Forget I'm a lady
♪ Men's shirts, short skirts
You know, when I watched Seinfeld,
I liked Kramer the best.
When I read Boy's Club, I liked Landwolf the best.
[Emily]I guess Pepe's kind of more of an Elaine.
-I mean... -[Lisa chuckles]
[Emily] Elaine is great, but, uh...
But yeah, if Elaine had become a symbol of the alt-right...
[chuckles] I would be like,
"Yeah, that's crazy. That shouldn't be the case."
[Johnny] It seems incredibly random.
People are like,
"This is the character we're going to use
for the Internet."
Like, "This is going to be the mascot for the Internet."
[camera shutter clicks]
[Aiyana] One day, he was doing Boy's Club comics
at my house.
[Matt]I remember I was sitting on Aiyana's little love seat
in her tiny ass apartment.
[Aiyana] He said...
"Can you...
stand over there and bend over and,
and kind of make it look like you're pulling your pants down
while you're bending over so I can draw you?"
You know, toilets are hard to draw.
People pulling down their pants is hard to draw.
So I kind of hunched over
and pretended like I was pulling my pants down
and he drew a little sketch.
[Aiyana]It ended up being Pepe.
So, that was my butt.
And my toilet.
-[trickling] -Ahh!
[interviewer] So is Pepe's body based on Aiyana?
[Matt]
[chuckles]
Whatever kind of weird stuff
kinda stuck with me in childhood,
sometimes it ends up in Boy's Club, like...
[Matt] I remember when I was in second grade
and I went to the bathroom alongside my cousin David.
And he pulled his pants all the way down to go pee.
Underwear and everything.
[Matt] It seems like it would feel really good
so I wanted to make a comic about that.
Feels good, man.
[Aiyana] That was the frame that...
[chuckles] ...started it all.
[whirring]
[Matt] I just thought it was cool
that I could just draw a comic,
scan it in and put it on MySpace,
and then people would see it instantly.
[whirring]
Back then, it was kind of newer territory and...
and I liked the vibe of MySpace a lot.
[Matt] It was like, um, you were inside
somebody's locker room or something.
At the time, I had some friends that, like, were into exercise.
[Matt]And they found it online, like a before and after shot.
It would say, "Feels good, man."
I thought it was really weird.
[Chris]A lot of weight lifters would be, like,
"Oh, I just finished a great workout.
Feels good, man."
And I remember just thinking, like,
"Oh, that can't be because of Pepe."
[Chris] You know, it's just some random accident.
[Aiyana] The catch phrase, "Feels good, man,"
started becoming more popular.
It would be a photo of a cat or something
and it would say, "Feels good, man."
Or there was one version of it that said, "Feels Goodman,"
with John Goodman's face.
It was pretty funny at the time. [chuckles]
[Matt] When I would check my email,
every so often, somebody would send me a link
to a Pepe being in some kind of weird chat room
or something like that.
I remember specifically,
my dad sent me a link to this kid
who made a Pepe song.
♪ Hey, Pepe
♪ I heard you pull Your pants down ♪
♪ All the way to go pee
- ♪ Could you show me? - ♪ Feels good, man
♪ Feels good, man
And it was like this big nerdy thing.
I was, like, kind of interested in it
as an Internet phenomenon,
but I didn't really think too much about it.
I was just like, ha ha, whatever.
[Johnny] When it started to snowball...
and Matt didn't seem to mind, I was a little, like...
"Well. I mean, that's weird."
[Johnny] I said, "Sue them. Lawyer up."
[Matt] Man, I'm like an artist
so I don't like suing other artists.
[Johnny]He's kind of just like, "Oh, yeah, man.
Just let them do what they want."
Using Pepe as a meme. That's cool, you know.
"Meme."
I didn't even know what a meme was
or I don't even still know if I'm saying that correctly,
but it was through Pepe that I learned what a meme was.
[calm music]
[creaking]
[birds chirping]
[wind chimes tinkling]
[Dr. Blackmore] It's hard to remember what I first thought
when I saw Pepe the Frog.
But I think I kind of imagined, like,
in my student days, these guys hanging out with a...
a spliff and having a nice time.
And he was just rather sort of hopeless and sweet
and I just thought, "Aw, mm."
[Dr. Blackmore] Chick, chick, chick!
Chickens, come on!
[Dr. Blackmore] The whole idea of memes comes from
Richard Dawkins' 1976 book, The Selfish Gene.
Most of the book is about
what he called "Universal Darwinism,"
which said all of biology is driven by genes,
but culture is driven by memes.
He said, look around you
and you'll see floating about in the primeval soup of culture
is information copied by imitation
from person to person.
So that would include chairs,
trousers,
hairstyles.
All of these things are only here
because humans have copied them
and the ones around us are the winners
in an evolutionary battle.
And then, gradually came the concept of Internet memes.
[Dr. Blackmore] And people can easily see
that process happening...
with Pepe.
Pepe is a wonderful example of a meme
that escaped out there into the memosphere
and suffered all the things you'd expect of a meme.
[Dale] Pepe, it's just folds upon folds.
Um...
[Dale] The Pepe technique is to draw too many lines.
There's another fold and then another fold.
And, like, these... these, like, lumps.
And he looks really cracked out, but that's the idea.
It's like steering into that mistake.
He also symbolizes steering into the mistake
of staying in your mom's basement.
[Dale] I saw Boy's Club around 2007 or so,
kind of when he was first posting it
on the Internet.
Then it just kept appearing in message boards.
"Feels good, man."
In that little story,
he's owning the fact that he's this weird guy.
That moment of owning your loserdom,
like owning your weirdness, right? It's like...
perfect 4chan ethics.
[keyboard clacking]
[Dale] Christopher Poole.
He was 14 years old, living with his mom,
spending all his time indoors, on the Internet, and...
He created this crazy monster in his basement.
[Christopher] Now, over 7 million people are using it,
contributing over 700,000 posts per day.
And we've gone from 1 board to 48 boards.
[suspenseful music]
So 4chan, just the way that it functioned,
was super conducive to creating memes.
[Dale] The way 4chan works is that
it's a Darwinian competition for attention.
So you have a post.
And if the post gets a lot of replies,
it floats to the top.
And if no one replies, it sinks to the bottom
and quickly dies.
It's a winning and losing system.
And it's a lot like a video game.
[Dale] There were all these adolescent boys
trying to own each other in the competition.
-And so it became this... -[whooping]
[Dale] ...culture of saying the most offensive thing.
And so, like, Pepe kind of melts into that community.
And all of the stuff that just exploded
out of the culture four or five years later
were being invented there by all these clever people
and they were all anonymous.
[keyboard clacking]
[classical music playing]
[Pizza]On 4chan, you're talking to another text box
so you're free to express those kind of secret ideas
that people have
that they don't feel comfortable expressing in real life.
I posted Pepes all the time.
To not post Pepe would be strange
because it's just... It's the meme.
Post, send. Boom.
[Pizza] So there I am right there.
It's hard to say why Pepe gained popularity so fast.
You could say it was just an easily relatable image.
I have my own collection. I have my reaction image folder
filled with Pepe and all the derivatives.
The term was like, "We feel alone together."
[Dale]Um, that was their idea.
As it ages, it just gets more desperate.
They would describe themselves as NEET.
NEET stands for Not in Education Employment or Training.
The idea was that they were trying to find a word
that described their situation,
for these sort of, like, masses of kids
who are just unemployed or just kind of dropped out of life.
I think the best thing would be to start with a job.
-No. No! -[Dr. Phil] Yeah, absolutely.
She needs a job.
No! [sobbing]
[Dale] So 4chan really comes to embody that culture
of checking out and living in your mom's basement.
It started in 2003 and still exists.
So imagine people being on there ten years,
like it becoming a lifestyle.
[knife thudding]
A lot of people are talking that they have
super hot basement layers where they get to NEET it up.
Well, I mean, basically, nobody's really touching my game
right now, you know? So...
Got the Primo couch bed
and I just kick this shit all over the place
because I just don't give a fuck about anything.
And, uh...
It's... it's a life.
[chuckles]
[Mills] I think I probably saw images of Pepe first
on the fitness board of 4chan.
You know, this frog was so prevalent.
What does Pepe mean to me?
What does he mean to me?
He's a frog.
He's a sad frog.
Sad frog.
[Mills] Now on 4chan, the quote-unquote sad frog
became the most popular image for displaying sadness.
There were other images that would describe that feeling.
[Mills] You have things like a picture of Keanu Reeves
sitting on a bench.
But maybe he's just deep in thought.
[horse neighs]
[Mills] That sad frog. You knew what it was about.
Nothing else needed to be said there.
Pepe the sad frog.
Pepe.
[woman #2] Pepe what?
-The sad frog. -[woman #2] The sad frog?
-Pepe the sad frog. -[woman #2] What's that?
[EKG flatlining]
You know, it wasn't something that's really circulated heavily
on, like, Facebook
or any of that stuff at the time.
[Mills] Pepe just kinda felt like uniquely 4chan.
[robotic man voice] Feels bad man.
I didn't know about the Boy's Club comic
or anything like that.
I did not know who Matt Furie was.
[Mills] Even after I learned about Boy's Club,
I was like, "Oh, they're making a Pepe comic.
Oh, that's cool."
[upbeat music]
[upbeat music continues]
[chuckles]
That's the story, um...
[Peder] It's about somewhere in the future.
The mutants have taken over and they make new children.
I like this style of gun. [laughs]
Are you, uh...
actually the guy that made...
-that made Pepe? Yeah. -Yeah, yeah.
[Matt chuckles]
But it must suck for you that it, uh...
That he has become, uh,
that he become hijacked by... by 4chan.
I mean, it definitely sucks, but, nothing's forever, right?
[Matt chuckles]
[Matt] I'm just a spectator to how things
kinda mutate and evolve on the Internet.
You kinda see everything as some big joke,
but it's like kind of a window into this kinda like dark place.
[shutter clicks]
[indistinct chatter]
[Matt] I'll draw you a little Pepe.
[Matt] People on the Internet have their own characters
that Pepe was interacting with.
There's one where he's interacting with this guy.
I think his name is Wojack.
[clanking]
I would see pictures of Pepe,
like, hugging this stark white sad looking guy.
And I was like, "What is that?"
[somber music]
They call him, you know, The Feels Guy or...
Wojack is the proper term.
[Mills] He was for expressing an unpleasant feeling.
I'd be sitting there and kinda be tense from anxiety
kind of, like... [inhales sharply]
You know, and being... like that.
And I go on the board, I'd be like, "Okay.
These are my people."
[Mills]We're all over the world but we all have
these feelings of anxiety and everything together
and it's like a group therapy on the Internet.
Even when I was at work, we had these security cameras.
I would duck behind, like, a stack of crates
and quick to be, like, "You dumb idiots."
[Mills] Then I'd check, like, 10-15 minutes later,
you know, to see who's replying to me,
and I would face an onslaught of people just saying
I was the most hideous man alive.
I would, you know, wear that as a badge of honor.
I'd be like, "Yes. I'm a true 4chan guy.
I'm a true social reject. I'm a true freak.
Yeah, you're darn tooting."
I'm a latecomer to Pepe.
Uh, probably because he's not my type.
[laughs]
[Dr. Aleks] I came to Pepe after he had gone dark.
Pepe is a sad frog.
He's never happy. He's just sort of miserable.
[thunder crashing]
And I think, for a huge population,
online and offline, we're not 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. Aleks] What was going on at that point
was that everybody was super damn positive.
The people were suddenly able to make cash money
out of their image
which meant that they had to be, like, totally rad,
happy, fitspo, my best-self thing.
And in drops Pepe... ripe for the taking.
Hey, guys. It's me, Lily.
[upbeat music]
Today I'm going to be doing a Pepe transformation.
Pepe starts to percolate into another population.
We've got a lot more women, a lot more girls.
[Dr. Aleks] They were sharing their own Pepe.
Hey, guys. I just googled what a meme was
and I think I'm in love with memes!
Pepe... is the best.
You draw the head,
which is just like a butt.
[Mills] Things begin to spiral really out of control.
A couple of celebrities, Nicki Minaj and Katy Perry,
they had posted on Instagram a couple of Pepe images.
[airplane whooshing]
[Mills]A lot of people see it for the first time.
They wonder, "Who is this frog?
What is this frog? What is this?"
I want to see some more of that.
They start making, like, a migration over to 4chan.
[Mills] Young women in particular,
downloading Pepe images , using them for their own likes.
And that was seen as...
despicable.
I love Pepe so much.
The true Pepe is this Pepe.
[girl #1]Pepe has green skin. It's so beautiful.
It's different from frog.
Pepe green is special green.
[eerie music]
[Mills] It seemed to me, like, invasion.
You had people that would come on and say,
"Why are all you virgin losers here?"
You know, "Where's the Pepe pictures at?
Where are they at?"
[girl #2] I strive to be Pepe.
Just kidding.
I hate Pepe the Frog.
Pe... whatever his name is.
Peep, Pepe.
Either way, he's stupid.
And I don't really know why I made my face green
to prove the point that I hate Pepe.
But let me prove it by saying,
"I hate you, Pepe."
I'm going to chop your head off.
Your little...
Your little froggie head off like this.
It was serious to a lot of people, like,
"This is the symbol of our culture."
[Mills] And it really was turning into a total Pepe Fest.
[Matt] Ooh, nice.
[Matt] Pepe was just really turning into a thing and, um...
my buddy Skinner was, like,
"Hey you should do a clothing line."
[fanfare music]
[camera shutter clicking]
Yeah, it was just kinda funny to make something official
out of something that's so, kind of, like...
bootlegged on the Internet.
I drew all these...
goofy-ass Pepes that were kinda based on...
just whatever random nonsense was out there on the Internet.
I like this one with the little cigarette.
[Matt] This one's particularly weird.
And this one is just... [blows raspberry]
I like that. That's a very stripped down Pepe.
The sad frog golf shirt.
You can have a pasta meal with your family
wearing this one.
Pepe was, like, a famous meme.
[Chris] And my friend, Jay, he got a tattoo gun.
He just had it set up in his kitchen.
And so one night,
I think it was just completely spontaneous.
We're just like, "Oh, let's get Pepe tattoos."
It's like very little thought goes into this at all, you know.
[chuckles]
[Chris] We just thought it was funny
to have a Pepe tattoo
and Matt was there so it was like a tribute
to my friend.
I didn't know at the time
but I got it, like, below my sleeve here.
[Chris] That would kind of, uh, come back to bite me.
As the Pepe defense was building
to try and steer people away from using Pepe
for their own, you know, normie usage...
that spawned a lot of angry, raging Pepes.
But then, that fateful day occurred
where there was a YouTube video of screaming frogs.
[man #1] Say something for the camera.
Look at the thing blow up like a balloon.
[squeaky scream]
[scream continues]
[Mills] They have a high pitched scream
which sounded a lot like...
-[imitates frog scream] -[squeaky scream]
[Mills] And it became like this battle cry.
[screaming]
[Mills]There would be somebody who would be coming in
from Instagram.
Sort of out themselves, maybe a sex-haver
or a woman.
A neurotypical, socially well-adjusted person.
Once you kinda get that seed planted in the head of, like,
you know, the popular kids and look...
look how they're living,
then look at you, you know. You're this...
You're this... slug.
[Mills] All you normies have been bullying us
our whole lives.
I'll never be one of you disgusting normies.
Fuck... normies.
[suspenseful music]
[screaming]
[eerie music]
You know, these were a group of disempowered men
who had retreated into fantasy worlds.
[growling]
[Dale]That was their last place of retreat, in a sense.
And so, having women there was what they didn't want
because that was a symbol of their defeat in real life.
Ursula.
Hey.
-Is that Twilight Sparkle? -Mm-hmm!
-Is that her name? -Yeah!
She's like, "Ursula, I'm going to help you."
[Ursula] Aw!
-Okay. -That's so cute.
That one says, "A pocket mouse sleeps...
-safely it in its nest." -That's so cute.
-It's a little mouse. -Oh.
[Matt] People would just email me
fucked up pictures of Pepe
and it didn't really shock me.
I'd be more shocked by, you know, people actually...
expressing some form of cuteness or love
like this other stuff is just... It's just garbage.
[Matt] I think the weird thing
about American culture in general is, like,
we do kinda celebrate garbage
and we also produce a hell of a lot of physical garbage.
So it's just like...
fucking garbage world.
[Matt] I was definitely conscious
of not wanting to be remembered
as the artist that did Boy's Club.
So I just wanted to keep doing other stuff.
There's no connection between this frog and Pepe
other than they kinda look like one another.
But this is just another frog in a different place.
[Matt] I decided to do a whole kids book
that was totally wordless.
It follows the life of this frog and his pet rat...
living in a little mushroom house.
They travel on the back of a bike.
[Matt]They wake up at nighttime and go exploring.
Okay, look at me.
[Matt] Through the forest
then they end up surfing on some dolphins,
and swimming and going underground.
I just really went
for the childlike wonder with this one.
[bicycle bell ringing]
[Brian] The Night Riders.
It's a work of highly skilled craftsmanship.
It took him almost a year to make it.
I told him, you know, I saw that he had that in him.
He had a Where the Wild Things Are
in him, I just knew it.
We were working on The Night Riders
before all this insane Pepe stuff started to happen.
[Brian] Pepe's really just the tip of the iceberg
for the kind of art that Matt's capable of making.
[Brian] How come the dragon doesn't have wings?
[Matt] It's more of a land dragon,
than a dragon of the air or a dragon of the sea.
So he's... He's a land dragon.
[Brian] The characters are of different species,
but they seem like friends from the neighborhood.
We can tell they love each other
and the book is built toward
a bunch of nocturnal animals experiencing a sunrise.
[seagulls squawking]
The end.
[crickets chirping]
[Dale] Pepe had escaped and he was roaming around.
And, like, it was fun for a while.
[chuckles]
[Dale] Um, until, uh...
-[rattles] -[shatters]
[Dale] ...it wasn't anymore. [laughs]
And on 4chan...
whenever they thought
quote-unquote normies, sort of outsiders or other sites
were stealing their memes,
they would try to make them as offensive as possible.
[Dale] It's like a classic punk response.
Literally armored like a punk, right?
And they're like, "It's so offensive, I...
It can't be co-opted."
[Dale]So they put him next to the Trade Towers disintegrating.
They put swastikas all over him and Nazified Pepe.
And it sort of snowballs.
Back then, it was just the most offensive thing you could do.
But it now reads as a weird prologue
to when the irony kind of melted away.
There are people on these platforms who believe
that because you've couched your intention in a joke,
that you can disavow it when people come asking.
That's right. That's exactly right.
So you create this ambiguity so there's no way for you
to mean what you really mean ever.
Yeah.
I think what's appealing about Pepe
is that he combines this impossible mixture
of innocence and evil.
[Joel] Like he has this kind of knowing smile
while he's performing acts that are really atrocious.
It sort of fulfills the idea
that we can say these terrible things
and just mean them as jokes all the time.
They're always just jokes all the time
and you can't prove otherwise.
[Joel] We're just a bunch of kids in our underwear.
It's harmless. No one really means it.
The problem, I think, is that it's really demonstrable
in the worst cases that this isn't funny.
You know, it's not funny when people die.
[sirens blaring]
[woman on radio] CPR in progress.
[man on radio] Okay, we got another gunshot victim at...
Shots fired! Shots fired!
A black car pulls up and stops
and he rolls down the window...
I just saw four gunshots.
[reporter #1] A Friday night rampage
in this bustling college town
after two gun battles with police and a chase,
seven people were dead.
Twenty-two year old Elliott Rodger
believed to be the gunman.
Tonight investigators are pouring over videos
Rodger posted online.
There was sort of this intense
pain that you could see where he was
really divorced from reality.
[Dale] Like he did the shooting spree in a car,
a fancy car his parents had bought for him
to boost his confidence.
[neighbor] He didn't even make an effort.
Didn't talk to anybody. And he was so closed off
and it was like when he was sitting there,
you can just tell he's just thinking these thoughts
in his head the entire time. He's just talking to himself.
[Mills] I came on to 4chan that day.
People in this environment were starting to get whipped up
and they're like, "Yeah, that's right.
You showed him who's boss."
You know, he, he went out there.
He stood up for being, you know, the virgin with rage.
The very first picture of Elliott Rodger that I saved
was a picture of this sort of
semi-transparent sobbing woman,
and then like three or four Pepes with guns.
It was like one of the very first ones
that like took Elliott and put it into like a,
sort of like a context.
[Mills] People started drawing Pepes
riding around in BMWs with Elliot Rodger.
Yeah, I kind of get a little bit energized by it, you know.
And it was kind of this, like,
maybe society does need to get flipped on its head.
-[static] -[radio playing]
[upbeat music]
Hi, Elliot Rodger.
[Mills] I don't condone violence, you know.
I'm not a violence condoner.
But, he set me off into the path
that made me who I am today,
and I have to acknowledge that.
[tense music]
-[buzzing] -[heavy breathing]
On 4chan, you see something totally new called the...
[inhales deeply] uh, Beta Male Uprising,
the Beta Uprising.
-[mouse click] -[Dale]The idea would be that,
all of them would
run out of their mom's basements
and start shooting people.
[suspenseful music]
And of course, like, it's a way of making fun of themselves.
It's always coded in guarded irony.
But of course, behind the irony is the seriousness.
Why are you talking about that?
It's because that's an issue that resonates with you.
[computerized voice] Uprise.
Welcome to your demise.
[Dale] Pepe then becomes the symbol.
You see him holding the gun.
It's the classic response from 4chan,
which is like the most nihilistic
and despairing, cynical right
where anyone wants to kill themselves
or do something awful, or do something anti-social,
making that screen illusion real in some way.
Um, they're like, "Yeah. Go for it."
[male anchor #1] Philadelphia area colleges
have all warned students to be extra cautious tomorrow
This is the threat that was posted on 4chan,
a message board where everyone is anonymous.
It was posted last Friday,
the day after the shooting in Oregon.
It phrases the gunman
as a fellow member of the Beta Rebellion.
The post on 4chan
uses a profile picture of what appears to be
the Grinch in a mask, holding a gun.
That same picture was used in a post
the day before the Oregon massacre.
[Finkelstein] You see, it's not just
the memes generate the violence.
It's that the violence becomes a meme.
But, it's just a joke.
Right? It's just a stupid frog.
[Mills] If you had had a victory over the normies,
you know, striking back at the oppressors,
it was seen as too enthusiastic to post like a big, you know...
grinning, laughing, you know, ha-ha-ha.
[suspenseful music]
So when this smug Pepe came out, it was groundbreaking.
Like in a way that is maybe hard to explain.
It was the most succinct,
perfect face.
Then the, uh, you know, the, the hand up.
It had the perfect
silly look to it.
You know, crude...
like holding back laughter,
but enjoying the suffering of others.
It was like the perfect trolling accessory.
The way he's redrawn
with his like thumb up like this, like really smug...
-[Lisa] Yeah. -It's like...
that tone is so ugly.
It's used to imply like...
being above
a conversation that people are trying to have
about kindness.
[indistinct chattering]
[camera shutters clicking]
[Mills] Trump was sort of seen as like the personification
of the smug Pepe meme.
When he was announcing that he was going to run,
every news story is, you know, they don't like him.
People in his own party, they don't like him.
And people in the other party, they really don't like him.
And it was like, "Oh, this is perfect."
He's making everybody upset.
A really interesting time in 4chan
is Trump's initial announcement
that he is running for president.
[Aaron] If you look at the 4chan threads,
before Trump's speech,
it was fairly skeptical.
But then they saw
a lot of these things in his rhetoric that they like.
They saw nationalism.
They saw white nationalism.
And almost immediately you'll see people being like,
can we get a Pepe with Donald Trump hair.
I want to start circulating this.
And that happened, that's within hours.
[birds squawking]
[ominous music]
[keyboard clacking]
I think that President Trump is...
a real life version of Pepe,
in the ability to illicit
a reaction and to get attention
and to express and to capture peoples' hopes and fears.
I was formerly the Director of Strategy and Data
for the Trump campaign,
so I know as much, if not more about how to use voter data
than anybody else in the country.
During the campaign,
there was an effort by 4chan
to get other people to support the president
by creating memes.
[Braynard]And then sharing them
to say, normies,
to try to motivate them to support President Trump.
The inside terminology
for this was "The Great Meme War."
It gave people who had never really been involved
in politics before
a way in.
[Braynard] The best memes that you see,
the most effective ones,
are just some person who has no power at all.
They have no influence, they have no money,
they have no connections.
But if they can make one good meme,
they can take off and go viral.
Then when you hypercharge it
by having the president retweet it,
you felt like you were part of this rebel group,
this insurgency
that was completely unpredictable and from
where no one would have ever expected it.
How does an image like this
end up on Donald Trump's Twitter account?
[Dale] 4chan supported Trump for a mix of reasons.
Some of it I think was this nihilistic idea
that Trump was a wrecking ball.
And that they wanted to embarrass people
by electing him.
[Dale] And so when Trump retweeted himself
depicted as Pepe,
it was like this watershed moment.
[reporter #2] This is Donald Trump co-opting the idea
of himself, uh, sort of substituted as Pepe.
[Braynard] It was so transgressive,
so anti-PC.
To most of the voters out there, it just seemed kind of odd.
But, if you were part of the community
that has been spending years and years, and years
using Pepe,
suddenly, a little antenna goes up
and you pick up a signal and say, "Wow.
Maybe this guy's right for us."
[suspenseful music]
[whirs]
[Greer] There's always magic going on
in any political campaign.
And so...
what happened when Pepe the Frog suddenly became, um,
in effect Donald Trump's invisible running mate...
was that a magical force had entered the picture
and it was a wild card.
[chiming]
A meme can become the anchor
or the seed, if you will,
around which a group of like-minded people can gather
and toward which they can focus their energy.
That's a basic tool of meme magic.
And that's one of the things we saw during the 2016 Election.
[suspenseful music]
[Greer] The way that magic was used on the Chans was
they focused on building up a series of hypersigils,
-of images like Pepe the Frog. -[lightning crackles]
[Greer] And piled into those images,
all of their hopes and all of their energy,
their emotional focus
of seeing Donald Trump in the White House.
You ended up with a lot of people on the Chans just going,
"Wow, I could do this."
[keyboard clacking]
[foreboding music]
[crowd clamoring]
It's not Republicanism as we have known it.
These are racist ideas, race baiting ideas.
Anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant,
anti-women. All key tenants making up the emerging
racist ideology
known as the alt-right.
[man in crowd] Pepe!
Now, alt-right is short for alternative-right.
The Wall Street Journal describes it
as a loose and racist ideology
known as the alt-right.
[man in crowd] Pepe!
Pepe!
And, and to most people,
that was a totally inexplicable thing at the moment.
It must be totally random.
To the white supremacist anti-Semitic
neo-Nazi right in this country,
that was a moment of triumph.
[keyboard clacking]
Suddenly, Pepe the meme, the most...
silliest piece of meaningless culture,
was sort of like passing through the screen.
[Dale] It was kinda like the dream of the troll,
making the Internet real.
[suspenseful music]
It was becoming like,
you know, weird to, like, have this tattoo.
You're here to get me involved in your...
nightmare world?
-[gate clicks] -What's good?
-We're here to exploit you. -[chuckles]
[both laughing]
Is this... this better be about Landwolf.
[Skinner] Duck your head.
Please don't kick my cat.
If, if you can help it.
[guitar chimes]
That... I think it's funny that, like...
that Chris got the Pepe tattooed on his arm and he was like,
-"I have to hide it now." -[laughing]
"Somebody at Subway thought I was a white power dude."
-Yeah. Everybody... -[laughs]
everybody's actually very...
everybody's very excited about Pepe.
They're like, "Oh wow, Pepe's this awesome meme, dude."
[Skinner] He rules.
-Yeah. -"Wow, you made Pepe?"
I was like all proud of myself, strutting down the street,
-you know. -[snaps fingers]
[Skinner] Now people just throw rocks at you.
"That's the guy who created Pepe!"
-Yeah. -[Skinner]You're not strutting
-anymore, are ya? Sicko! -[Matt] No, I'm not.
Now I'm, now I'm like
just slithering down the street
in a pool of my own waste or something.
-[Skinner] Whoa, like a... -[Matt] Yeah.
-Like a slug lord. -Like a...
Just a... a slurping slimeball.
[Skinner] But I really do feel like
this would only happen to you.
[slime rustling]
[squelches]
[Adam]I interviewed Matt Furie in September 2016
with The Atlantic.
My impression of Furie was that he was very well intentioned,
but somewhat naive about the extent to which
this symbol had been appropriated by the far right.
[reporter #3] Pepe is a white nationalist symbol...
[reporter #4] ...increasingly being used
by white supremacists...
It's something of a mascot by the alt-right.
[Adam] Defining the alt-right is somewhat easier these days.
But around 2016,
it encompassed a lot of people
who were ideologically opposed to the left
but not necessarily united on every issue.
And then you've got people like Richard Spencer
who are overt white nationalists.
[Spencer]
[Adam] But the alt-right Pepe allows them
to pretend that they're kidding.
They're not kidding.
What they want is for you to be
both scared by the threat
and be mocked for being scared in the first place.
The point is to cause that kind of psychic anguish
and then they draw a great deal of pleasure from that.
Basically alt-right is a big tent
or rather a big rock
under which creeps a diverse assortment of
paleo conservatives, men's rights misogynists...
I remember I went to a taping of Sam Bee.
And she had a segment about Pepe the Frog.
And I got to meet her after the taping.
And good old-fashioned neo-Nazis.
And I was like, "You know,
Pepe was actually created by a friend of mine
and he's a really sweet artist
and, and it doesn't mean this thing that it,
it transformed into,
and she was just, sort of like, "Okay."
The alt-right's use of Pepe just drowned out
any other visual interpretation,
you know, Trump's former campaign chair Steve Bannon said
the Democrats are not the opposition party,
the media is the opposition party
and how do you beat the media?
You flood the zone with shit.
Well, these people are flooding the zone with shit
so that you don't know what's real or what's not.
[Alex] I mean quite frankly I've been to the events.
It wasn't even real.
Literally, they're just Jewish actors.
A lot of the KKK guys with their hats off
literally looks like the cast of Seinfeld...
[Adam] A conspiracy theorist like Alex Jones
appeals to Trump because
one of Trump's major political tools
is forcing people to reject objective reality
in favor of his version of reality.
[Alex] Well, Donald Trump, let me say this.
You are the leading presidential frontrunner
with the Republicans
gaining a huge lead as you don't back down, but I got to just...
And the point of it is to obliterate objective truth.
[man on megaphone] Fake news!
[crowd chanting] Fuck CNN, fuck CNN!
Trump frames his language
in terms of winners and losers.
I said are you sick of fucking winning?
[crowd] No!
What happens when that mindset is adopted
by people on the bottom?
Instead of thinking of society
so like where everyone is sort of equal
and we're all lifting ourselves up together,
you think the world is a hierarchy
and the only way you're going to get to the top
is by displacing someone else.
Then you start getting these ideas like,
"Well, maybe I'm at the bottom
because this group of people has snuck their way to the top."
They probably cheated their way up there.
And so then you get these elaborate
conspiracies about like,
"Oh, well, the, the Jews run the media.
[Dale] Uh, "Immigrants, they're the problem."
[supporter] Build a wall! Build a wall!
Fuck those dirty beaners. Build a wall.
[Alex] We're not giving in. We're not going away.
Have we not given them
a big giant red, white, and blue middle finger?
[crowd cheering]
So, then it started to get strange.
[Greer] Somebody on the Chans, nobody knows who,
found an ancient Egyptian frog god
whose name was Kek.
He looked like an anthropomorphic figure
with a frog's head rather like Pepe.
Obviously that had to be shared
and... the Chans went ape.
[Greer] The reason why this caught on
is that Kek is a bit of gamer slang.
For complicated reasons, where we say "ha-ha-ha,"
in certain gaming circles, you say "kek-kek-kek."
[ominous music]
[supporter #2] Trumpsters taking the hill.
The nation of Kek.
Kekistan taking the hill.
[Joel] They came up with this idea of Kekistan,
of a kind of promised land for Pepes.
And anytime you have these ideas
of ethnic homelands
and tribalist blood and soil,
it automatically seems to cluster in
with the worst exercises in human depravity.
All you need to do is just put on the mask.
Put on the mask.
[coughing]
[Greer] There had been rumors flying on the Chans
that Hillary Clinton was actually seriously ill.
And a great many chaos magicians
were focusing their magical work on one goal
which is making her collapse in public.
There's a thing that people talk about
in occult circles called the TSW moment.
A TSW, the polite version is This Stuff Works.
[Greer] The Chans went through their TSW moment.
Hillary Clinton collapsed
and had to be hauled into the SUV by other people.
[keyboard clacking]
I honestly think at that point
if Donald Trump had asked the habituated Chans
to walk into the ocean,
they would have done it.
You know, to just be grossly generalistic,
you could put half of Trump's supporters
into what I call the basket of deplorables.
[audience laughs]
-Right? -[audience applauding]
The racist, sexist,
homophobic, xenophobic,
-Islamophobic... -[microphone feedback]
[Dale] Hillary Clinton then released an explainer
explaining that Pepe was a hate symbol
and that he symbolized the alt-right
and through these associations,
it really made Trump look like a neo-Nazi.
But it made her also look a little clueless, right.
The idea that she was denouncing a cartoon frog
was delightful to 4chan,
delightful to the alt-right.
[Dale] It was the best thing
that could have happened for them.
[Braynard] It certainly galvanized people
who thought, "Hey, I really dig Pepe."
And she just launched an attack on me
and called me a Nazi.
[Alex] Ladies and gentlemen, the battle has just begun.
And we are ready.
[Matt] And I think that that just kind of solidified it.
Now once you start deeming something
as a hate symbol,
It does, kind of, become that.
A popular cartoon character turned Internet meme,
Pepe the frog, has been added to
the Anti-Defamation League's database of hate symbols
[anchor #1]In a press release, the organization wrote,
the character had been, quote,
"Used by haters on social media
to suggest racist, anti-Semitic or other bigoted notions
as a hate symbol."
[Aiyana] Matt's name was in the description
about it on the website.
-[mouse clicks] -[Aiyana]It's like a nightmare.
He's thinking, "I've worked my whole life
as an artist
and now I'm gonna be lumped in
with this weird new swastika.
[newscaster] Matt Furie put out a statement
to the Associated Press. He said that he was horrified
to see his creation become a mascot
for the alt-right fringe movement.
[Matt] I don't want to be associated with this.
You know, I'm, like, trying to write children's books.
The nature of the media and politics and stuff that
I've been trying to escape from my entire life.
I don't give a shit about any of that stuff.
Then I got pulled into it just because...
I'm on a hate symbol database list now
and it pissed me off.
-[birds chirping] -[dogs barking]
[whirring]
As the news was going on that this Internet frog
has been marked as like a hate symbol,
that's when I got the phone call from our buyer.
[Rachael] They pulled it right away.
So, we have about 3,000 items
that were going to go into 580 stores across the U.S.
and now it's in my garage. So...
[Rachael] These were probably, like, $15 each to make.
If you think of 15 times 3,000,
like, it's pretty crazy. [chuckles]
-Yeah it's 45,000 dollars. -[Rachael] Yup.
We didn't want to give it to Goodwill.
We didn't want to sell it ourselves
because we're afraid...
white supremacists would wear it and then...
What is that worth versus putting out a hate symbol?
And I'm sure you feel the same way.
A lot of the merchandise ended up having to be destroyed.
[Matt] Yeah, now, that's kind of the least
-of my worries. -[Rachael] I know.
[Johnny] He was a dummy.
He just kinda let his character get away from him
and now, this shit happened.
Matt is just like most of us, a poor, cartooning loser.
I was suggesting that he sue the Anti-Defamation League
for defamation. [chuckles]
[light music]
[smooches]
[Matt] I'm just trying to be positive.
Not everybody has a platform to talk about this kinda stuff.
I teamed up with the ADL
to just try to offer people some creative solutions.
-[audience applauding] -Hi, everybody.
Um...
So what we're trying to do now
is to start a Save Pepe campaign.
-And uh... -[audience laughs and applauds]
I invite everybody
to draw their own peaceful version of Pepe
and share it on social media with the hashtag "savepepe."
[Matt] Can we turn something
that's become a recognized hate symbol
into a recognized love symbol?
[cheerful music]
[Emily] It was really funny, but it was also really lovely.
-Like I tweeted about it. I... -Yeah.
-I tried to help. I, like... -Yeah. I drew a Pepe.
[Lisa] Part of the Save Pepe campaign.
I'm like, damn, he's kind of going through a situation
that isn't right and I want to help him out.
[rasping]
Does that look like Pepe?
[Hampton laughs]
I've never drawn Pepe before,
but I figured I'm going to do whatever I can to help
because I'm such a big fan of Matt's, and...
So, I'm butchering Pepe here, but...
something like that.
[Kevin] In Matt's work,
I can feel his love for nature and the universe.
I was like, "Oh, yeah, Matt's my buddy, you know.
I like Pepe, so, I just kind of, like, you know...
I made a Peace Frog Pepe, you know.
Does that look like Pepe?
[both laugh]
[interviewer] It's getting less and less like Pepe.
[laughs]
[Matt] I've been working on it for about a month now
and I've gotten about 500 and counting
brand new peace Pepes.
My goal with this is to eventually start something
that I'd like to call the Peace Pepe Database of Love.
[cheerful music]
My whole thing is just to focus on positive
and just keep being creative.
[ominous music]
[Braynard] The attempt by Matt Furie
to wrest control over Pepe,
it seems like he understands the Internet
about as well as Hillary Clinton does.
Maybe if the original artwork wasn't so pedestrian and basic
that an eight year old can draw Pepe.
A scribbling that was improved upon by others
that was given meaning that it never had before,
I would just encourage Matt to...
you know, just be glad to have been a small part
of a very big thing.
[Matt] Art is supposed to be therapeutic, so, uh...
before Trump got elected,
I just did this kind of, like, nightmare scenario of Pepe,
like slowly morphing into Donald Trump
and then into a monster and then,
uh, being trapped inside the monster's mouth,
as you can see, and, uh...
It's like a nuclear war.
[explosion]
[eerie music]
[crowd cheering]
[Alex Jones] This is the new American moment.
This is like Martin-Luther-King- I-have-a-dream speech.
It's like Washington crossing the Delaware
[all] ♪ We are the champions
[whooping]
[Mills] We were all ecstatic.
[keyboard clacking]
Donald Trump, he wasn't supposed to be there.
[Mills] We all felt, like,
the meming had played a part in the election.
[Matt] The Internet's joke kind of came to fruition.
[victorious music]
[crowd cheering]
[reporter #5]The chaotic scene just blocks outside the secure
of the inauguration and parade routes.
[reporter #6]
-What? -[man speaking]
It's Pepe. He's become kind of a symbol...
[upbeat music]
After the election, Matt just came to me and said,
"Hey, I'm going to draw a comic strip with Pepe in it
and I'm going to kill him."
[Matt] The Pepe thing was so out of control at that point
and whatever Pepe meant to all these other people
didn't mean the same thing to me.
So I just killed him.
[thunder crashing]
[Matt] I just thought it'd be funny to do a comic strip
where all the boys are at his funeral.
♪ Your picture
♪ Is still
[thunder crashing]
♪ On my wall
♪ The color
♪ Are bright
♪ Bright
- ♪ As ever -[crying]
♪ The red is strong
♪ The blue will rest pure
♪ Something lasts
♪ A long time
♪ Something lasts
♪ A long time
[Matt] I didn't think it'd get noticed or anything.
I'm sure you recognize
the cartoon character Pepe the Frog.
[male anchor #2]Well, he won't be around so much longer
because his creator has decided to kill him off.
[woman #3] A carton frog died on the Internet.
His name was Pepe.
It seemed like every time he drew Pepe,
he would get hounded by reporters.
-[thunder crashing] -[bell tolling]
-[Aiyana] He just hated it. -[camera shutters clicking]
[thunder crashing]
[Pizza] When I had first seen Matt's death of Pepe comic,
I was honestly a bit sad.
[sobbing]
But the Pepe we see, unfortunately,
has been so far removed from the original...
that the Pepe Matt was killing was his own.
[suspenseful music]
[keys jingling]
[Matt] The burden of this weird Pepe shit
was starting to make me feel anxious and weird.
Maybe it is whatever people say it is.
Like I can't fucking control it, you know.
[whooshing]
♪ The power that's inside
♪ Pokemon! Gotta catch 'em all! ♪
♪ It's you and me
[Peter] Owning a rare Pepe is about being alpha.
It's about having dank, rare Pepes nobody else has.
And it's about how do we get to the moon in a Lambo.
[Peter]Okay, let's pull it up.
I'm in these crypto forums,
and for the longest time,
these guys would talk about Pepe Cash.
Some huge guys,
like, seven to eight figure portfolio crypto guys.
And I look at the website, I'm like, "What?
What the fuck are they talking about?"
What is it?
[gurgling]
[millionaire]So I actually am a Pepe Cash millionaire.
How many million is that?
Is that 363 million?
Ah, 363 million Internet Pepe.
You know, I like that.
[whirring]
[millionaire] This is when we christened the SS Rare Pepe
which I bought with Pepe Cash and I live on it.
If you want to explain the rare Pepe economy,
imagine a few dozen geeks on the Internet
came up with a way to trade memes off 4chan
and lock them into ownership.
There are some Pepes that are superhero knockoffs.
You know, Iron Man Pepes, Spiderman Pepes.
Some people's heroes are more political in nature.
Trump Pepe,
which is awesome, because he's just like,
"Make crypto great again, whether you like it or not."
It's much different than comic books,
or even collectible baseball cards
because it exists as math on the Internet first...
and then later you can print the physical copy of it.
This is the physical card. This is worthless.
This is the thing that's worth
hundreds of thousands of dollars.
So, I was going to this digital arts conference
called Rare AF. Rare As Fuck.
[robotic music]
Luckily for me,
they're having the world's first rare Pepe auction.
Rare Pepe after rare Pepe
after beautiful rare Pepe passing by
and then finally gets to the end.
It's the ultimate rare Pepe.
[Peter] The Homer Pepe.
[tense music]
And I'm like, "I'm getting this thing."
Homer for 200.
-[man #2] Homer! -Two hundred.
[Peter] People start placing bids.
Twenty, 30, 40, 100,000 Pepe Cash.
Two hundred thousand Pepe Cash.
-[auctioneer] Two seventy-five. -[man #3] Two seventy.
[Peter] It starts getting so crazy
and it gets to 350,000 Pepe Cash.
Which is about 39,000 US dollars.
Three hundred fifty going once, going twice.
-[man #4] Uh-oh! -Sold!
[crowd cheering]
[man #4] What inspired you to pay 39,000 US dollars
-for a rare Pepe? -I'm just excited about Pepe.
[man #4] Okay.
So this is Homer Pepe.
Currently the world's most valuable rare Pepe.
Now what makes this Pepe worth so much?
It's the only one with a misprint.
Wait a minute. "Wait a mintue. Wait a mintue."
That's value.
[engine roars]
[rock music]
[whooshing]
[bell tolling]
[Jeremy] You're Matt, right?
[Joel]
You have gainfully employed all of us.
[all laugh]
So, uh... What are you guys talking about?
We're all working the general realm of, you know,
weird online behavior from a scientific perspective.
[Jeremy] We have, uh, security people from the U.S.
We have cryptographers from the U.K.
We have systems people from, uh, mainland Europe
and we take a large scale analysis of data,
getting a quantitative understanding of hate speech
throughout the web.
[indistinct chatter]
We had to figure out a way
to be able to measure this stuff at large scale
and we ended up building a system to measure memes.
[Jeremy] Just to give you an idea of the scale, Matt.
So we had over a billion posts
from Twitter, Reddit, /pol/ and Gab.,
and we examined the 160 million some odd images.
So obviously, these weren't all Pepes,
but the scale of this data is huge.
-This is only for a year. -Interesting.
[Jeremy] There's a variety of different memes,
but there tends to be a Pepe variant
in every single one of these clusters. So...
You pick a random meme
and Pepe has been inserted into it
in some way, shape or form.
[Jeremy] In a lot of ways, Pepe becomes an entry point
to radicalization.
That's a very scary thing to think about.
Do you feel any personal responsibility for...
the bad stuff that has come out of this?
I mean, you shouldn't,
but you know, we're humans, right?
[Jeremy] We feel guilt for things
that we shouldn't feel guilt for.
[Matt] Um, I'm... I mean, uh,
maybe I could have been more proactive earlier on
-to, like, try to control it. -Yeah.
[Jeremy] So, the question of, "Can you get Pepe back?"
The reality is that there is, you know,
160 million memes, essentially, in a year, that we collected.
Not all of them were Pepes again,
but a good chunk of them are.
That's a tough genie to put back in the bottle.
Um, yeah. I wish you luck.
I do.
[Jeremy] Sincerely.
[somber music]
So... [chuckles]
I try to stay positive, you know.
[Matt] But to be honest, I...
I've gotten trolled.
Somebody sent me this.
I don't take it personally
even though I'm having my head decapitated.
It is what it is what it is, right?
Um...
[Matt] It's not like wearing on kind of, like, my spirit.
But it's kind of wearing on my drive to be creative.
It did manifest anxieties that I have yet to unravel.
He just kinda slept a lot and, uh...
You know, honestly it was kinda like hard to talk to him.
You know, I let him know I was there for him
and all that, but, like,
there wasn't anything anyone could really do.
[anchor #2]Tonight a Denton ISD assistant principal
is coming under fire for writing a new children's book.
A book, some say, is politically motivated.
I'm using Pepe just as a lighthearted way
of expressing maybe some conservative, uh, values.
[Eric] If you love America,
you're going to love this book for sure.
When Matt found out
that there was an Islamophobic racist children's book
starring Pepe coming out on Amazon,
he was so upset.
And that's when he kind of... freaked out about it.
[Aiyana] It was, like, the last straw.
It's like... It's like hell, man. Like...
If you want to... If you want to escape hell,
you can't ignore it.
You almost have to go to the center of it.
[elevator dings]
[quirky music]
[Louis] It is not very often
that nerdy intellectual property lawyers
get asked to fight the alt-right.
But when we do, we're ready.
[Matt] I have a whole team of lawyers
that are working with me pro bono
and have really empowered me to feel
like I do have some say in all this.
[upbeat music]
He really wanted to prevent the digital release of the book.
[Stephanie] Inside it was, in fact,
a not so veiled reference to a lot of alt-right themes.
We found out who was publishing it
and explained that Matt Furie owned the copyright to Pepe
and that we were prepared to enforce his rights in court.
[Louis] The Adventures of Pepe and Pede.
the electronic version was never published.
But the issue here is, when you shut down one person,
others pop up.
-[marker rasping] -[Matt] You know,
I'm a compassionate guy and I'm a sensitive guy.
But being able to work with a team of lawyers
has given me strength to...
shut these assholes up.
[host #1] You've been sued by a frog, bro.
[host #2] Do you even know this yet?
No.
-It's all over the Internet. -I'm surprised.
Surprise, motherfucker. You got sued by a frog.
[host #2] You've been sued by a fucking' frog, dude.
A conspiracy frog named Pepe.
[Alex] We did sell a poster that a listener made
titled Make American Great Again
that had a bunch of images,
of symbols that were popular during the campaign.
We talked to our trademark lawyers
and they said,"Mr. Jones, this is so outrageous.
It's against the First Amendment"
It is insane.
This is cockamamie balderdash.
He was selling a poster with Pepe on it
with a bunch of douchebags
and I just didn't want him to sell the poster.
[Johnny] The problem isn't the drawing
or the making of the art, you can do that.
[Johnny] It's just when you mass produce it and sell it,
that's when it gets into a stickier area.
[Matt] He's like, "Yeah, the man's gonna stop us."
He just jacked up the price of the poster
and then offered to sign them.
[Alex] I'm trying to free Pepe the Frog.
And I'm either going to succeed
or I'll be destroyed in the process, but that's okay.
[Matt] I actually don't know many people on here.
-[Johnny] Is that Trump, too? -[Matt] Yeah.
-There's are two Trumps. -Sounds like having two Trumps
in the same poster, is that legal?
[Johnny] Well, that's Billie Joe Armstrong from Green Day.
[Matt laughs]
[Johnny] And there's Marsha from The Brady Bunch.
-Billy Idol. -[Matt laughing]
-Billy Idol. -And there's Courtney Love.
[both laughing]
[barber] A lot of times, I'm cutting people's hair
for court when they're in trouble so...
Yeah, I'm not into... I'm not in any trouble at all.
Just, uh, weird situation. [chuckles]
Yeah, I've got this kinda, like, a notorious,
uh, character named Pepe the Frog.
-Have you ever heard of him? -[barber] Yeah, I actually have.
-My kids have, too. Yeah. -Oh, yeah?
-[old man] This guy, Pepe? -Yeah, that guy right there.
So the guy, Matt, do you know him?
[Matt] That's me. [giggles]
That who you got to go to court with?
Oh, no, that's me. I am Matt.
-[old man] Oh, you're Matt. -Yeah.
[old man] Oh.
[Alex]I don't know who this guy is doing, this Furie fella.
But I agreed to be deposed...
for the Pepe the Frog deal.
[woman #4] Sir, would you raise your right hand to be sworn?
Do you solemnly state
the testimony you're about to give
will be the truth, the whole truth
-and nothing but the truth? -I do.
[Alex] I don't like the frog. I don't like this whole thing.
But I got to stand up for the First Amendment.
Let's say the frog is triggering for me now.
I hate Pepe.
[man #5]Video tape deposition of Matt Furie
in the matter of Matt Furie vs. InfoWars,
and Free Speech, LLC.
[man #5] So from 2001 to 2007,
you had sort of this carefree part-time, knucklehead life.
I still have that.
[man #5 chuckles] Excellent.
And what did you do to prepare for today's deposition?
Really nothing.
[man #5] So how did you pick the name Pepe the Frog?
It sounded like, um, "peepee."
To go peepee.
[man #5] So it is a cartoon frog, right?
Yes, it's a cartoon frog.
[man #5] It has round lips, right?
I wouldn't call that round lips.
-[man #5] Okay. Uh... -More tubular.
[man #5] Tubular lips.
[Matt] I thought I had some kind of like Zen-like grip.
He kinda did the good cop, bad cop thing on me.
He was like, "So you like Beavis and Butthead"?
[man] Do you watch Ren and Stimpy?
Yes.
[Matt] But then, he was all kind of like...
"Let's get 'em."
[man #5] Forty-nine. This is a fun one.
-[thuds] -[sighs]
[man #5] Hold that up and tell us what's 49?
Um, yeah, it's an allegory on the direction nature's going
from my perspective.
[man #5] Uh, excuse me. The second to last page.
-Page 20. -I'm sorry.
I worked out this morning.
[man #5] It's just coincidental that they look alike?
Absolutely.
An original character that's based on a hot dog man.
Part man, part hot dog.
It's clear what all this is.
So people can say Jones is using a white supremacist symbol
when it's not.
It's a way of saying I'm a white supremacist.
It's a way of defaming me...
and acting like I stole something all at the same time.
It's just... god! Evil!
That's just evil!
[man #5] Is that Big Bird?
Yes.
[man #5] Thirty-one is not Grimace?
No.
[man #5] So those aren't derivations of the Hamburglar?
-Oh, these guys? -[man #5] Yes.
-Do you mean Mayor McCheese? -[man #5 chuckles]
And you got no license to put that up.
-[scoffs] -When I was in sixth grade,
I did not attain the license to draw this stuff.
You know, I went to the bathroom at one point
and he's taking a piss, too, and he's like, uh...
"So I guess this is where all the dicks hang out."
And I was like, "Ha ha, that's funny.
And also awkward that I got my dick in my hand
and we're talking right now and..."
And then, shortly after that,
he's just fucking screaming at me.
We're suing, uh, Alex Jones...
because he...
[man #5] That's not the question I asked you.
Oh.
[man #5] Answer the question I asked you.
It... It...
twisted my noodles for a while and I, like...
You know when you, like, say something in passing
to somebody else and it's like...
you wish you would've said something else.
[Matt]This was like four hours of concentrated...
me wishing I would have said something else.
It's not a comfortable situation.
Dude, it sucked. It was hard.
[Matt] From my point of view, this is a direct copy.
[man #5] So all of your references before
are just references.
But this one is what, traced, you mean?
Yeah.
[man #5] Why do you suppose Pepe looks happy in that picture?
Pepe's kinda like a mirror.
So the way that users online would use Pepe
is a reflection of...
themselves, to an extent.
That's my... interpretation of it.
[man #5] No further questions.
[man #6] I have nothing else here either.
Thank you for your time.
This marks the end of the video tape deposition of Alex Jones.
Good luck.
[man #6] We're going off record and the time is 13:00 even.
[Matt] Let's try to find a little round...
-[Ursula] Oh! -Oh, there it is.
-There. -So we need two dark green ones.
Okay.
[Matt] It took me weeks to detangle my mind
after all this legal stuff.
That's what I signed up for, you know.
It's not going to be easy, but...
but I'm willing to go the distance with this shit.
♪ And he hops and hops
♪ Pepe, watch out And he hops and hops ♪
♪ Pepe, do stop
- ♪ And he hops and hops -[cellphone ringing]
♪ You make me dizzy
♪ I say, Pepe, come here
-Yeah. - ♪ And he hops and hops
♪ Pepe, watch out
[Matt laughs]
[Aiyana] Everybody's saying congratulations.
"A sparkle of good news in these troubling times."
[light music]
[Matt] This was actually going to trial.
And then Louis was just, like,
"Oh, surprisingly they want to settle."
[Louis] We were confident we were gonna prevail at trial.
And InfoWars gave up.
It just went live on InfoWars.com.
[Alex] InfoWars settles Pepe the Frog lawsuit.
Pays tiny settlement to creator Matt Furie.
[Marc] This amount...
It's a bar tab at a topless club, you know,
for one good night, so...
-So, what the heck. -[Alex laughs]
This is more than I've ever made on theBoy's Club comic books.
So, it just, kind of... To put it into context, like,
Alex Jones is like...
"Hey, we got away with barely paying anything."
But it's all... it's all relative.
This is a big deal to show what these bullies are up to
and what happens when you stand up to them.
[robotic voice]
At the end of the day, he's just...
selling a bunch of bad ideas, bad supplements,
in a bad attitude.
[Matt] It's just a business.
Without you buying the videos and the books
and the supplements,
we couldn't put on one hell of a junkyard dog fight
against these bastards.
[Louis] This case against InfoWars
was the latest in a string of successes.
We went after Richard Spencer.
Uh, we went after Baked Alaska.
We went after the Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website.
We have successfully enforced Matt's copyrights in Pepe
against somewhere between 75 and 100 different entities
in connection with images or language of hate.
And this is beginning to turn the narrative
of Pepe back around.
[siren wailing in distance]
[Matt] This guys are, kind of, like, messing with reality.
Amplifying negativity or normalizing negativity.
And I'm doing everything I can in my power
to change the course of this thing.
And I think removing Pepe from the hate symbol list,
it would be a win for...
peace.
[elevator dings]
With all these legal steps that I'm taking,
everything I've been doing up until now,
my goal is to get it off the hate symbol database.
To me, it's not a symbol.
It's a character, you know.
It's the character,
but he's adorned with different symbols, you know.
[Matt] And they're pretty extreme stuff.
[Oren] I mean, yeah, you know.
It's tough, right? Having it on the hate symbols database,
we have found to be really useful
for those who are trying to understand
this barrage of symbols that is being thrown at them
whether it's a frog, a meme, or a hand gesture.
-[Matt] Mm-hmm. -It's complicated.
[Matt] Well, yeah, it is complicated
because I think with Pepe on the list,
it's seen more as a win for, you know,
the so called alt-right or these others
because now they have that symbol.
You know, this is going to be a lifelong journey for me
'cause I'm going to be entangled with this character forever.
But what would be the impact of removing it?
[Oren] Most of these people are creating these images
and are going to keep turning these things out.
Your bottomline request...
It's really not going to solve the issue.
It's not about this cartoon being on the hate symbols list.
[Oren] And it sucks!
-[Matt] All right, man. -[Oren] Thanks a lot.
-Yeah, thank you. -Good luck.
[tranquil music]
[Matt] I don't want the narrative
to be like I'm victimized here.
People have to deal with horror on a daily level.
Let's work together, you know.
Let's uh... let's uh...
figure this shit out, 'cause, uh...
it's not getting any better, you know.
All of the accounts of what happened to me
and my family over the years are enormous in scale
and historically rooted in a legacy of white supremacy.
[crowd singing] ♪ This little light of mine
♪ I'm gonna let it shine
[reporter #7] Why? Why are you being provocative?
[man #7] I like trolling people. It's fun.
[reporter #8] You do it for fun.
Yeah, it's fun.
The aesthetics and ideals
that extremists are promoting online
with their use of Pepe the Frog
are now bleeding completely
into what you would otherwise describe as regular people.
[man #8] Yeah, go ahead and video me now.
I'm videoing you too, motherfucker.
You know what's coming to you people, right?
You know Trump is just the beginning.
You bearded monkeys have no place in America.
The ideology is premised
on justifying violence towards vulnerable people.
[crowd chanting] USA! USA!
[Adam] And when that seeps into the beliefs
of regular Americans,
you're heading for some place very bad.
[crowd jeering]
[ominous music]
You can't put the genie back in the bottle,
but you can send it somewhere else.
To actually change the narrative it would be necessary
to take the frog, to take Pepe,
and do something very different with him.
Something that could develop...
a meme of its own.
[somber music]
[protesters chanting in Chinese]
[Dale]Suddenly, out of nowhere, Pepe is being used in Hong Kong
as a symbol of freedom, democracy, and youth protest.
I was surprised as much as anyone.
-[protesters chanting] -[pops]
[Dale] This is the newer version of him.
He is wearing a hard hat
and he's wearing the outfit of the protesters.
[Dale] It was like a way to resist authoritarianism.
[explosion]
[Dale] Oh, he was crying from the tear gas.
[Matt] Pepe is now being spray painted on walls
as a symbol of hope.
[Dale] Like when does that actually happened in history?
You see it in movies all the time.
Like, "This is the symbol we're all gonna rally behind."
Yeah, this never happens in reality,
except now it happened to Pepe.
[chuckles]
[Dale] Pepe beams in everyone's brain
this idea of, like, the every man.
As you grow up, you realize that, in fact,
you can affect the world,
and you can use a small lever
to actually move a great amount of weight.
[crowd singing]
That's the power that Pepe has, right? Like...
"Oh, what's more worthless than cartoons?"
But like, "What's more powerful than Mickey Mouse?"
[laughing] Right? Like...
One of the most powerful things you can do
is create an iconic cartoon.
[in Chinese]
In a lot of traditional societies,
it was very standard to look for omens.
[bubbling]
[Greer]Signs, strange portents, things that were not expected
that suddenly came out of the blue.
Because that was a warning
something was shifting in society,
something had gone wrong,
or there was something building
that you need to know about before it arrived.
Pepe the frog is an omen.
[thunder crashes]
[Greer] We need to listen
because it's not going to go away...
until we hear the message that it has to say.
[ominous music]
[Matt] Nowadays, I've just been thinking
about this concept of a spiral.
Life unfolding in this kind of spirally nature.
So, I've been drawing in more kind of circular ways.
I think that there is kind of a collective consciousness
of darkness and light.
And the only thing that seems true to me
is that everything is going to change.
Like, Trump is not going to always be the president.
You know, Planet Earth isn't always gonna have people on it.
You know, who knows?
[both laughing]
[Matt] The positive notion of Pepe
is the possibility that you can change again.
[burbling]
Hard core happy place.
You got to go hardcore happy.
[Matt]I still like drawing him.
I go through waves, like,
I think last time I talked to you, Arthur,
I was sick of him.
But now, I like drawing him again.
[dreamy music]
[breathes deeply]
[tranquil music]
[water sloshing lightly]
[breathes deeply]
[splashing]
[uplifting music]