Arts
Wednesday, September 23, 2020 — 13
Pepe the Frog’s fall from
grace in ‘Feels Good Man’
This
review
has
taken
longer to write than I, or my
editors, expected. In the last
few days my time has been
spent digesting the insidious
darkness that characterizes
“Feels
Good
Man.”
This
documentary
follows
the
tale of Pepe the Frog and the
character-turned-meme’s
journey to become a symbol
of hate. But it is also a tale of
depravity fueled by anonymity,
of how social media is both a
reflection and a perversion of
real social life, and a chapter
in the grand history of white
nationalism in America. The
very sour cherry atop this
sundae of reckless hatred is
the man behind the meme
— Matt Furie, Pepe’s own
Dr. Frankenstein — whose
innocent
cartoon
was
bastardized by the internet,
shattering his psyche. “Feels
Good Man” is not for the faint
of heart. I am left questioning
my own “stamina” in the face
of hatred.
Furie
created
Pepe
in
2005 for his “Boy’s Club”
comic. The lanky frog was an
innocuous character with one
particularly peculiar habit: He
peed with his pants around his
ankles. When questioned about
this idiosyncrasy, Pepe could
only say “feels good man.” How
did a cartoon frog’s bathroom
habits make the character an
icon for the alt-right? For that,
we can blame the internet.
Pepe’s
circuitous
journey
into internet hell really began
on 4chan, where anonymous
users jockeyed for a spot at the
top of one of the site’s message
boards by eliciting reactions
from
their
peers.
This
feature of 4chan meant that
provocativeness was valuable.
To be number one, you had to
garner attention and incite a
reaction. This will spell Pepe’s
downfall.
The documentary features
a few 4chan users, who share
that
they
saw
themselves
in Pepe; their own peculiar
habits, embodied by the self-
proclaimed
moniker
NEET
(Not in Education, Employment
or Training), made them “feel
good,” too. Pepe represented
an
internet
counterculture,
those who felt rejected by
mainstream society.
The problems began when
Pepe memes leaked out of 4chan
and onto Instagram, Facebook
and other mainstream social
media. Pepe had been taken by
“normies,” the socially well-
adjusted people who are seen
to represent the oppressors
of NEETs, the relegation of
the less well-adjusted to a
lesser social status. So, while
4chan users had already been
making Pepe a provocateur,
to
keep
“normies”
from
stealing the symbol of the
counterculture, and to prevent
Pepe from gaining mainstream
recognition, the memes had to
be so offensive and distasteful
that no one would dare touch
Pepe again.
All told, a group of people
who felt they were being
actively kept at the bottom
rung of society now had a
tool to push back. And by
pasting their virulent racist
rhetoric atop a cartoon frog,
they made real bigotry into a
joke. Fighting Pepe would be
farcical, because it was “just
a meme.” Hillary Clinton was
lambasted
by
the
alt-right
for doing precisely this. This
twisted irony is at the center
of
Pepe’s
most
despicable
associations.
When “smug Pepe,” a meme
in which the frog touches
his chin and dons a sinister
smirk, made its rounds, people
compared it to Trump’s mug
on the cover of GQ in 1984 and
the association between then-
candidate Trump and Pepe
was solidified. Trump-Pepe
memes became more common,
with Trump himself tweeting
an illustration of himself as
the racist frog. As Trump’s
policies began to interact with
the
meme-ing
provocateurs
on 4chan, Pepe’s status as a
genuine symbol of the alt-right
was undeniable.
One of the documentary’s
more prominent interviewees
is Susan Blackmore, scholar
and author of “The Meme
Machine,” a text exploring
Richard Dawkins’s memetic
theory.
Blackmore
believes,
in short, that ideas are spread
autonomously by human “meme
machines.” Like evolutionary
gene theory, in which the
stronger
biological
traits
outlast and supersede weaker
ones, meme theory says that
certain ideas will outlast and
overpower others. Blackmore
says that “culture … is more
like a vast parasite growing
and living and feeding on us
than a tool of our creation.”
In other words, culture is
memes, shared by humans in
the form of language, religion,
art and Pepe. For Blackmore,
memes share themselves. She
doesn’t address this in the
documentary; however, I am
curious if she would ascribe
any culpability to the millions
of people who have created and
shared offensive Pepe images
in the decade or so since he
took the internet by storm.
While images may share
themselves by way of the
human
“meme
machine”
mind, this transmission can
certainly be manipulated and
directed. Another remarkable
interviewee is a former Trump
campaign official who spoke
matter-of-factly
about
the
campaign’s use of social media
to win support. In criticizing
Matt
Furie’s
#SavePepe
quest
in
partnership
with
the Anti-Defamation League
to reclaim the meme, this
former
campaign
official
suggested that Furie failed to
understand the internet and its
machinations. In many ways,
this campaign official is right:
#SavePepe backfired, and the
Peace, Love and Pepe memes
were co-opted and swiftly
desecrated.
In
a
September
2016
interview with Adam Serwer
for The Atlantic (who is also
featured in the film), Furie says
“I think that’s it’s just a phase,
and come November, it’s just
gonna go on to the next phase
… in terms of meme culture,
it’s
people
reappropriating
things for their own agenda.
That’s just a product of the
internet.” It seems Furie takes
a view similar to Blackmore’s
of memetics and acknowledges
the entropic character of the
internet. What’s unsettling,
though, is Furie’s confidence
that white nationalism would
all go away.
If this country has seen
anything in the four years since
Furie’s interview with Serwer,
it is that hatred is not “just a
phase.” The very foundation of
our society is constructed from
inequity and bigotry. In this
moment of reckoning, we must
be hyper-aware of the “jokes,”
because
hatred
masked
as
humor is insidious.
The film is not entirely
without hope. Pepe has been
taken up by protestors in
Hong Kong as a symbol of
love. Alex Jones of InfoWARS
settled out of court with Furie
after Pepe’s creator sued the
vicious
conspiracy
theorist
for
copyright
infringement.
Furie,
whose
sadness
and
guilt are upsettingly palpable
throughout
the
film,
has
moved onto new projects. His
art is really something.
Despite
developments
in
Hong Kong, a recent expedition
to 4chan showed me that in the
U.S., Pepe is beyond salvation.
But our democracy is not. As
we continue to fight hatred in
America, pay close attention
to the potentially dangerous
power of the meme, especially
wielded
by
anonymous
idealogues. This summer of
organizing and resistance has
shown that the internet can
be a potent force for good and
change. Let us embrace this in
the hopes that we might shift
the tide of memetics in our
favor. And for the love of Pepe,
VOTE.
Daily Arts Writer Ross London can
be reached at rhorg@umich.edu.
ROSS LONDON
Daily Arts Writer
MOVIECLIPS INDIE
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Raised by RuneScape: my
extremely online childhood
When I describe myself as being
“extremely online” to my friends,
they usually agree — they too
love memes and spend hours on
Twitter.
Trying to clarify what I mean
gets messy. It usually turns into
some form of me reciting my own
version of Bane’s quote from “The
Dark Knight Rises”: “You merely
adopted the internet; I was born in
it, molded by it.”
If I was molded by the internet,
“RuneScape” was the pair of hands
that shaped me.
By the time I reached third
grade, I was in the internet
trenches. Deep in the trenches.
I’m talking roleplaying “Pokémon”
on
fansite
forums,
watching
Naruto fan flash animations on
Saiyan Island, trying to learn the
dance
from
“Caramelldansen”
and consuming dozens of Strong
Bad emails on Homestar Runner.
According to the record books,
June 21, 2007 was the first time
I logged into RuneScape. I spent
the first of what would become
thousands of hours glued to the
computer. If “Pokémon” roleplay
and Naruto fan flashes were the
trenches, “RuneScape” was my
ninth circle of digital hell.
For
the
uninitiated,
“RuneScape” is an MMORPG
(Massively
Multiplayer
Online
Role-Playing Game), an open world
fantasy multiplayer game where
you play alongside thousands of
other players. If you’ve ever played
“World of Warcraft” or “Club
Penguin,” you’ve played an MMO.
They have an emphasis on social
interaction, with in-game guilds
and virtual economies. It’s the
social aspect of “RuneScape” that
shaped me most — where I learned
everything from politics and pop
culture, to learning what sex was
and finding out Santa isn’t real.
As a young kid hooked on
fantasy, “RuneScape” triggered
all the right neurotransmitters in
my brain. I could practice archery
and slay dragons and do quests
day and night. I loved the grind of
mining coal or fishing for lobsters
ad infinitum, selling them for gold
and buying fashionable clothes
for my character to wear while
mining and fishing. Whenever I
leveled up in “RuneScape,” a little
animation of fireworks would
display over my character; I can
still feel that dopamine rush. My
favorite thing to do was chat with
other players while training — I
would usually juggle three or four
conversations at once. Meanwhile,
back on planet Earth, I was going
days without stepping outside. I
rarely opened my mouth. Messages
on “RuneScape” could be my only
social interaction for days.
Before long, I grew so deeply
immersed into my online identity
that there was Dylan and then
there
was
Smallbones25,
my
“RuneScape” username. By fourth
grade I genuinely didn’t have a real-
life friend, but that never bothered
me. I had friends in noodleboy12,
a friend met fishing on the docks
in Karamja, and Vortex King,
a “RuneScape” veteran I met
training in the Warrior’s Guild. My
social life got even better when I
adopted the alter-ego of a 17-year-
old girl named Kendra. When
your character is a girl in a male-
dominated video game, friendship
and conversation online come easy.
Somewhere down the line my
dad picked up on the unnatural
amount of time I spent on my
computer
and
the
extreme
emotional
investment
I
had
in “RuneScape.” As a parent,
I can’t imagine how shameful
and disappointing it must have
felt
when
your
eight-year-old
son with no friends came to you
bawling his eyes out because he
got scammed in a video game or
accidentally died and lost all his
virtual possessions. It crossed the
line when I started staying up too
late and sleeping in on school days.
My dad started cutting the internet
on my computer at 7:30 p.m. on
school nights. The first night I
staged a pseudo-strike outside his
DYLAN YONO
Daily Arts Writer
office, demanding my internet be
reinstated. He ignored my futile
protests, so I adapted. At 7:30 I
would go to sleep for the night, and
when the internet turned back on
at 5 in the morning, I woke up to
play “RuneScape” before school.
For a long time I was content
with “RuneScape,” a constant in
my life I didn’t know how to live
without. Then puberty hit in sixth
or seventh grade and my virtual
friends were no longer enough for
me. I started to acknowledge my
hobby as an addiction. I started to
recognize my lack of real
friends as an inadequacy, a
personal failure. I wanted
to be one of the “cool kids,”
and those kids were talking
to girls on Facebook and
wearing fake Gucci Belts,
not slaying dragons on
“RuneScape.” If I wanted
to be cool, I’d have to quit
“RuneScape” and instead
play “Call of Duty” with
them and drop slurs on
Xbox Live.
I
quit
“RuneScape”
cold turkey. For the next
few years I dreaded and
resented
the
addictive
game upon which I built
my prepubescent social life.
Making friends in middle school
felt like a desperate attempt to
catch up on what I missed out on
for so long. In the deepest pits of my
eighth-grade depression, I blamed
“RuneScape” for my complete
lack of social skills and feared
it for its life-shattering power. I
clocked in over 2,000 hours on my
main “RuneScape” account and
easily thousands more that went
uncounted, and what did it give
me?
I thought: “RuneScape” doesn’t
give, it only takes. Mostly, I thought
“RuneScape”
took
away
my
childhood. I’d find myself thinking
things like, if I’d spent all that time
playing sports, I could be the star
of the football team. When I heard
people talk about their childhood
memories and childhood friends, it
would trigger a depressive episode
that lasted hours. My childhood
memories placed me in a dark room
in front of a screen for hours on end.
“I will never have a childhood,”
echoed through my skull.
I’d made some friends in middle
school and tried to do more
“normal” things like joining the
track team or going to the mall,
but with social skills built on the
internet, face-to-face interaction
felt like a losing battle in my
head. I frantically advertised my
dedication to fashion as my new-
found “cool” hobby. I needed a
way to distinguish Dylan, the
cool track runner fashionista,
from Smallbones25, the internet-
addicted dweeb.
Naively I thought I was alone
in living my life online. Even after
I quit “RuneScape,” I just dumped
the same amount of time into new
outlets like playing “Minecraft” or
making friends on anime fansites.
I was caught somewhere between
wishing I could leave it all behind to
become a “cool kid” and wishing all
those people I met on “RuneScape”
or “Minecraft” or anime fansites
could be real. It never clicked that
there were real life people behind
all those “RuneScape” avatars.
One day during a discussion in
English class, I dropped an anime
reference in front of the class. As
soon as I let it slip I shut myself
up — I’d accidentally let a little bit
of Smallbones25 out. It didn’t seem
like anybody noticed, though.
Somebody noticed.
Sitting alone at lunch always
made me uncomfortable, so I
would always eat in the library.
The library was where the “nerds”
hung out until fourth period. One
of those nerds was in my English
class. He saw through the fashion-
runner-boy and knew I was hiding
Smallbones25 beneath. Gradually
he lured me in and inducted me
into his nerd circle.
I’d made real friends in the
last two years since I’d quit
“RuneScape” and tried to start
over, but for the first time in my
life I had friends I could be myself
around. They were different. They
didn’t play sports. They didn’t talk
to girls. They didn’t give a shit
about my Air Jordans. But they
watched videogamedunkey and
played “Dungeons & Dragons” and
they were always three steps ahead
of the meme curve from constantly
browsing 4chan. They too were
born on the internet. They even
played MMOs!
The library nerd circle developed
into a close-knit crew that would be
some of the only friends of mine to
persist after high school. We played
games online together, yeah, but we
also did the same kinds of things I
would have done with considerably
more “normal” friends, like going
to the movie theater or talking
about school. Something about the
backdrop of a shared childhood
spent in front of screens made
those normal things feel so much
more genuine, like our
brains were all tuned to the
same frequency.
A small part of me still
feared “RuneScape” for a
long time, but by the time
college rolled around I was
breathing nostalgia for it.
Watching my friends play
MMOs like “Path of Exile”
or “Final Fantasy XIV” was
encouraging. I finally had a
reckoning with RuneScape
when I logged into old
school “RuneScape” for the
first time in seven years,
a perfect recreation of the
game that first sucked
me into the abyss back in
2007. It wrapped me up in
excitement just like it did when I
was a kid, but in a new, healthier
way. Old friends like noodleboy12
and Vortex King were long gone, but
new friends took their place. Most
of the player base is also nostalgic
adults, and reminiscing about a
childhood built on “RuneScape” is
a staple conversation in old school.
Like me, many of them balanced
school, work, hobbies and a social
life. I spent a couple months in the
summer getting my fill of nostalgia
and then naturally drifted from
the game when school came back
around.
I still wish I went outside and
talked to real people a lot more
than I did when I was a kid, but I
wouldn’t
remove
“RuneScape”
from my life story. The game didn’t
just take — it gave a lot back. It
gave back in small ways, like all
the weird quirks embedded in
my personality. I have a knack
for napkin math from always
calculating my experience points
and levels. I chatted so much on
“RuneScape” that I learned to type
fast — so absurdly fast that I’ve
never met anyone faster. I also spent
years accidentally spelling things
in British English (“RuneScape” is
a British game).
COURTESY OF DYLAN YONO
If I was molded
by the internet,
“RuneScape” was
the pair of hands
that shaped me.
Read more online at
michigandaily.com