fakenewskilledpepe-blog - Tumblr blog

[fakenewskilledpepe-blog]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Noelani Guerrero (@packofpibbles)

[fakenewskilledpepe-blog]

The sound your rooster makes when it is running low on batteries.  [YouTube]

[fakenewskilledpepe-blog]

When Fake News Becomes Real

Meital Balmas’s 2012 study ‘When Fake News Becomes Real’ is a research analysis on the investigation of Fake News, more specifically comedy shows. These shows such as Jimmy Fallon or The Daily Show with Jon Stewart as she pointed out, it is a program that uses satire to reveal the artificiality of elected officials as well as the journalists who write about them (Holbert, 2004).

So when programs that use political agenda as intellectual humour as it is clearly satire, accidently convince people (who are not aware of the satirical humour used) that what they are saying is a correct and validated source (Nir & Mutz, 2010). This grows, breeds and stems into consequences and retaliations of, i.e Pepe…  Balmas notes that research in this field has either investigated the political entertainment outlets in isolation from other media sources (i.e., news) or compared and contrasted hard news with various forms of political entertainment (2012) (YIKES!). So it is evident that the conspiracy of Pepe the frog, resembling a nazi and an ultimate symbol of hate is within the people’s realm to blame as well. Be concise with your information. Whether it be intentionally fake news, or just incorrect news content, it still drives a very powerful message to those consuming the content. Leave Pepe out of the news and maybe neo nazi’s wouldn’t have found themselves salvaging and wearing the frog as a symbol of their own.

Meital Balmas, 2012, ‘When Fake News Becomes Real’:Combined Exposure to Multiple News Sources and Political Attitudes of Inefficacy, Alienation, and Cynicism

https://uonline.newcastle.edu.au/bbcswebdav/pid-3190967-dt-content-rid-10641679_1/courses/CRS.118927.2017.S1/Balmas%20When%20fake%20news%20becomes%20real.pdf

[fakenewskilledpepe-blog]

These are “rare” Pepes on the internet. I wish that the Nicki Minaj Pepe would have been a symbol for pop culture rather.

Image taken from @pepethefrog instagram account thankyou 🐸

[fakenewskilledpepe-blog]

The Anti-Defamation League has officially named Pepe the Frog a hate symbol

The Anti-Defamation League has a database of official hate symbols. It’s called Hate on Display, and it includes the Aryan fist, the burning cross, the swastika and the (((echoes))) symbol. The ADL added Pepe the Frog, a once-innocuous  meme, to that list Tuesday afternoon .But can a meme really be racist? Yes and no.

follow @the-future-now​

[fakenewskilledpepe-blog]

This type of propaganda is the prodigy of the Black Plague, aka Fake News. People turn Pepe into meaningless figures to create a mood, a reaction or context. Why do people have to wear his face with fascist pride? What has the world come to when we negate an innocuous JPEG and mould it into a malicious, vindictive racist figure? I blame you fake news. And yeah I blame you too alt right. What else are you going to ruin for us? You have trump, let us live our fearful lives through memes and digital content! I plead you! Think of the children!! What other cartoon figure that the internet had loved for years will you continuously use as a product of sales and numbers?

Trump supporters deck out Fearless Girl statue in MAGA gear, Pepe the Frog sign

This is why we can’t have nice things. Exhibit B: Just over a week after a “finance broseph” made a spectacle of humping Wall Street’s Fearless Girl statue, some Donald Trump supporters stopped by to outfit her in MAGA gear. Just what she needs.

A Gothamist tipster reported that two men descended upon the statue early Monday morning, shortly after midnight.  They accessorized her with a red Make America Great Again hat, an American flag cape and some opinion-espousing signs. 

One read “VETS B4 ILLEGALS,” while the other featured Pepe the Frog, a meme that the Anti-Defamation League classifies as a hate symbol, tipping his shades alongside the Trump name. The men were also wearing MAGA caps, suggestive of pro-Trump political leanings. Read more (3/20/17 4:54 PM)

[fakenewskilledpepe-blog]

#NotAllPepes

The video blog appropriates the unnecessary implication that Clinton and her team perpetuated to the media about Pepe. The vlog shows a compilation of news reporters on TV explicitly stating that Pepe is a symbol of white supremacy… according to no sources… or maybe just that one thing Clinton said once..

And the fact now that the ADL designated Pepe as a symbol of hate??? Pepe is lumped into the same cateogories of the nazi swartz sticker, the confederate flag, etc.. As Chris Ray Gun states, “these images do not have any direct meaning themselves”, referring to Pepe and previous memes that the internet uses light heartedly. He also makes a point, referring back to politicans (which is his main argument) that is “a little unsettling that a politician can take an innocuous thing and retroactively apply hate to it”. Which is exactly what happened, it all started with Clinton’s inaccurate assumptions.

[fakenewskilledpepe-blog]

Pepe’s image and reputation was tainted and got to the point of no return due to the fake assumptions and news claiming Pepe’s association with the alt right (Thanks Hilary and CNN etc). Angela Nagle, a writer and academic told the Australian Guardian that the alt right ran with the impartial symbol “through the subcultural elitism and vauge ironic in-jokey tone that Pepe represents well… Let them have their tedious nihilistic juvenile symbols.”

Victoria Pickard’s Media Failures in the Age of Trump’ clearly identifies the lack of research that some of these news outlets put into claims. The article entails evidence of discursive parameters around political debates during elections. The lack of empirical research was palpable as the coverage of the 2016 presidential campaign depicted a false equivalence between Trump and Clinton while emphasizing spectacle over substantive policy issues (Patterson, 2016).”

Pickard’s argument is the disgusting nature that some news media outlets have on social and political issues. There was no evidence that Pepe was a symbol of hate and racism, but the anger and attention as people were outraged to this accusation, were increasing the numbers. CBS station’s CEO Leslie Moonves stated publicly that “for ratings-driven news outlets, the always controversial Trump was the gift that kept giving”. “[Trumps candidacy] may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS”. “The money’s rolling in and this is fun… this is going to be a very good year for us… bring it on Donald, keep going” (Collins, 2016).

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/08/pepe-the-frog-creator-kills-off-internet-meme-co-opted-by-white-supremacists

Media Failures in the Age of Trump, Victor Pickard, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, 2016

[fakenewskilledpepe-blog]

‘Memes in a digital world: reconciling with a conceptual troublemaker’ By Limor Shifman.

This report evaluates the concept of ‘meme’ in digital culture. Shifman states that it is this inter textual dialog that memes became a highly visible practice, and the term has become an integral part of the vernacular.

I personally love memes. I find that memes give an indication to a state of mind, an event or expression through satire, or a literal meaning- it applies context. However, Limor Shifman dislikes them, in fact she calls them a “pain”(Shifman, p.361).   

Shifman states that “enthusiastic advocaters argue that the meme explains everything their opponents assert, it explains and changes absolutely nothing, it might be worth asking whether the meme concept may be useful for something”(Shifman, p.362).

I understand when she ask whether memes are useful for something, because I don’t really know- I personally seek memes for my entertainment; whether it be irrelevant, or implanted with meaning. 

However, whether she can do anything about it or not, memes are apart of our digital culture now. Memes are represented in protest, advertising, social situations, and increasingly making a mark with politics. So to deny them, would be denying a large structure of today’s society- particularly the younger generations. The report is evidently skewed as it was published in 2013, so the internet and meme culture have come along since then. As the blog represents that the concept of Fake News eventuated a common belief that the meme ‘Pepe’ symbolises something treacherous. If meme culture had no use or purpose, why has Donald Trump, a politician, pursued the significance of Pepe in his campaign? Why did Hilary Clinton, the opposing political party actively engage and attempt to ridicule Trump and Pepe? Why are news companies following this up and attacking a picture of a frog? 

Meme culture in 2017 is much more powerful and recognised than previous years. In the meme time, the blog will explore the further impact that fake news has on digitial culture and investigating how and why the cartoon frog Pepe was killed by these circumstances.

Shifman, Limor. “Memes In A Digital World: Reconciling With A Conceptual Troublemaker’”. My Library. N.p., 2013. Web. 21 May 2017.

[fakenewskilledpepe-blog]

A leap away from Pepe

"I think that’s it’s just a phase, and come November, it’s just gonna go on to the next phase, obviously that political agenda is exactly the opposite of my own personal feelings, but in terms of meme culture, it’s people reapproppriating things for their own agenda. That’s just a product of the internet. And I think people in whatever dark corners of the internet are just trying to one up each other on how shocking they can make Pepe appear.

I think what is happening now is overshadowing the importance Pepe has as a symbol for youth culture, and it’s been taken out of context and turned into something other than that. I honestly just think it’s a phase."

Furie coming to terms with the loss of a memorable meme within our generation. It is interesting how he notes that it is just a phase amid the internet and meme culture, however the fact that he had to dismantle and separate himself from the meme and the meme from the alt right, is a massive stance against appropriating a symbol of happy/content.

Transcript taken from ‘It’s Not Easy Being Meme’ , Matt Furie speaks to Andrew Serwer from The Atlantic 

Image from Matt Furie

[fakenewskilledpepe-blog]

[fakenewskilledpepe-blog]

[fakenewskilledpepe-blog]

Death by Fake News

Pepe the Frog lays here, dead, and just a jpeg now. Actually he was always a jpeg, but one that was a universal symbol as chill, or sad with those big puffy eyes and an elongated smug or disappointed expression. Pepe was put down by his Frankenstein creator, Matt Furie early May, this year (2017). Furie felt he was forced to kill Pepe off as he was hopelessly losing his battle of hatred and white supremacy association.

Pepe was just a dude we all related to on the internet. He wasn’t out there to promote, change, influence or cause a reaction- there was no agenda apart from making people laugh.

The internet isn’t just a place for highly skilled computer tech geeks anymore, people are increasingly advancing their digital skills. This is evident throughout the process of reinventing and remixing the original neutral Pepe. People got inventive, and insensitive, and way over the top. The image began as a smiling frog with a catch phrase “feels good man”. Many renditions involved a Nazi Pepe, A White Supremist Pepe wearing the Klu Klux Klan outfit.

But it was Fake News that constantly enforced the idea that Pepe was in fact a representation of hate and a Donald Trump supporter. Hilary Clinton’s website put out an “Explainer” on why Pepe is represented as a symbol for hate : “Donald Trump, Pepe the frog, and white supremacists". 

The alt-right adopted the character as a mascot after it was repurposed on far-right message boards. Images of the frog, variously portrayed wearing a Hitler mustache proliferated hateful messages aimed at Jewish and other users on Twitter.

News outlets constantly posing the question “Is Pepe Racist” or confidently stating to the public “For those of you who don’t know, Pepe as a White Nationalist Symbol” (CNN).

This train line of false information is driving and carrying the deceitful claim that Pepe is racist.