“But wh-what's… a 'Ma–'… what's, um, what's 'Monica W' mean?”
– Matt Furie¹⁾

Pepe the Frog is a dynamic meme with a complex, polarizing history that can be challenging to explain, especially when you don't have a grasp of every angles, so I've mapped out how the initially relatable meme unfolded and mutated over time from what I've gathered.

“One, he's mixed in with this weird white guy who he's always hugging, which I don't understand. […] Two, he's got, randomly, a blue shirt and brown lips, and that's his accepted outfit now. Those are the two things that kind of piss me off about it. Other than that, I don't really care.”
– Matt Furie²⁾

According to Matt Furie, the character originated in a MS Paint comic, used in a Zine called Playtime,³⁾ and he'd get reused for a MySpace web comic titled Boy's Club in 2005.⁴⁾ These comics were mostly nonsensical, stoner humor comics based on his early 20s. One comic in particular notably features Pepe with his pants down to his ankles, urinating into a toilet, and saying “feels good man” in the last panel.

This phrase in combination with Pepe's expression would become a reaction image on 4chan around 2007,⁵⁾ where it also became a motivational phrase for bodybuilders. At some point, somebody gave Pepe a blue shirt and brown lips to the author's dismay,⁶⁾ then Pepe received other emotions like “feels bad man”, which led to names like “sad frog”, “feels frog”, and the “you will never” frog.

Pepe was loved by the internet, so much that celebrities like Katy Perry⁷⁾ and Nicki Minaj⁸⁾ even used memes of him. However, the 4chan community felt resentful over his newfound popularity that, following a mass murder incident in May 2014, an irredentist, anti-normie⁹⁾ “Rare Pepe” campaign had began in the “ROBOT9000” (/r9k/) board¹⁰⁾ where new Pepe variations were pumped out like trading cards.¹¹⁾¹²⁾

Nevertheless, Pepe let people's negative emotions to come out while the public eyed them, so there was a brief period where shocking variants with gore and feces were used as a scare tactic. However, these did nothing since you could just scroll over them. From there, the “smug pepe” resurfaced, “REEEE”¹³⁾ turned into this anti-normie battle cry, and the concept of irony starts to blur.

“dumb frogposter”
– Anonymous

In the mainstream consciousness, Pepe had remained a reaction image, especially with social platforms like Discord and Twitch encouraging custom emotes, though Twitch users will need some third-party extension. According to these extensions' custom emote databases, Pepe-related reaction images in the form of emotes like “FeelsBadMan”,¹⁴⁾ “EZ”,¹⁵⁾ “FeelsWeirdMan”,¹⁶⁾ and “PepeLaugh”¹⁷⁾ have been in use since 2015.

From this point forward, more of these Pepe-related reaction images were becoming custom emotes, which includes: “monkaS”,¹⁸⁾ “POGGERS”,¹⁹⁾ “PepeHands”,²⁰⁾ “monkaW”,²¹⁾²²⁾ “peepoHappy”,²³⁾ “PEPEGA”,²⁴⁾ “pepeD”,²⁵⁾ “widepeepoHappy”,²⁶⁾ “pepeJAM”,²⁷⁾ “YEP”,²⁸⁾ “Sadge”,²⁹⁾ “PETTHEPEEPO”,³⁰⁾ “AWOOGA”³¹⁾ or “BOOBA”,³²⁾ etc. Some streamers even call their viewers “frogs”, like “newfrog”.³³⁾

As for those who braved the imageboard environment, they saw: a Spurdo Spärde version of Pepe dubbed “Apu Apustaja” from Ylilauta in 2016, a Resident Evil 7 meme revive the “Pepe Punch” image,³⁴⁾³⁵⁾ the bear market mascot “Bobo the Bear” in 2018, some user forcing “cheesed to meet you”,³⁶⁾³⁷⁾ and the origins of “AWOOGA”³⁸⁾ or “BOOBA”³⁹⁾ which would briefly spread to the likes of Twitch and horny Twitter.

“I don't like the frog, I don't like this whole thing, but I gotta stand up for the first amendment. Let's say the frog is 'triggering' for me now. I hate Pepe.”
– Alex Jones⁴⁰⁾

For certain users, the anti-normie campaign did not stop as trolls were now actively conflating with far-right movements and the violent, anti-social ideas were unironically starting to take root. This depiction would explode after presidential candidate Donald Trump retweeted a Pepe on October 13, 2015,⁴¹⁾ giving much fuel to his campaign and the dangerous “meme president” title.⁴²⁾

With the cards in Trump's favor, a 4chan user⁴³⁾ shouted “Pepe”⁴⁴⁾ at a Hillary Clinton rally in Nevada on August 25, 2016⁴⁵⁾ and Trump's son shared a Pepe meme.⁴⁶⁾ Then on September 27, 2016, the ADL added “Pepe the Frog” to their list of hate symbols⁴⁷⁾ which forced Matt Furie to finally intervene. Furie would say that he'd… vote for Clinton⁴⁸⁾ and reclaim him…⁴⁹⁾ then he killed⁵⁰⁾ and revived him for $34,757.⁵¹⁾

Meanwhile, Pepe became this parody religion where people saw him an incarnation of the Egyptian diety Kek, a term that was initially a “lel” or “lol” variant,⁵²⁾ and believed he was capable of “meme magic”.⁵³⁾ This led to people inventing “Kekistan”,⁵⁴⁾ thinking GETs were magic with Clinton's collapse,⁵⁵⁾ and the 1986 Italian disco song Shadilay would randomly become a memetic anthem.⁵⁶⁾⁵⁷⁾

After Trump entered office, a racist toad dubbed “Groyper” resurfaced⁵⁸⁾⁵⁹⁾ and a clown Pepe that would be dubbed “Honkler” unironically became an alt-right dogwhistle.⁶⁰⁾⁶¹⁾ However, Furie would eventually start fighting back, taking legal action against an assistant principal⁶²⁾ before tackling high-profile targets including Alex Jones,⁶³⁾ The Daily Stormer,⁶⁴⁾ Baked Alaska, Richard Spencer,⁶⁵⁾ and so on.

“These carefree 'normies'⁶⁶⁾ who like to randomly use Pepe stickers don't understand Pepe at all (that's why they're called normies). The name 'Most Saddest Frog in the World Sticker Pack' simply can't be any more stupid. If Matt saw this, he would cry.”
– Ruòjī⁶⁷⁾

On the Chinese internet, Pepe is simply the “sad frog”, rendered as “bēishāng wā” (悲伤蛙), “bēishāng qīngwā” (悲伤青蛙), “shāngxīn wā” (伤心蛙), or “shāngxīn qīngwā” (伤心青蛙). Around October 2014, Pepe was imported to Chinese social platforms⁶⁸⁾ as a reaction image,⁶⁹⁾ so young people saw him as a “cute frog” as he became commercialized and made into a sticker pack.⁷⁰⁾

During the 2019 Hong Kong protests, a “pro-democracy” protest over an extradition bill that stemmed from a murder case involving a Hong Kong couple's deadly quarrel on their vacation in Taiwan, Pepe became a “resistance symbol” out of nowhere.⁷¹⁾⁷²⁾ From Furie's limited perspective, he was delighted by the sudden turn of events, reportedly responding with “Pepe for the people!” in an email.^73)74)75)

In reality, he was just a symbol of the youth. When the “Strawberry Music Festival”⁷⁶⁾ came to the Sanya railway station in Hainan on November 28, 2020, he resonated with music lovers and the youth.⁷⁷⁾ The “China Green Foundation”⁷⁸⁾ also recognized this symbolism, as they ran a national environmental campaign in the PRC that featured a sunflower Pepe as its mascot in May 2021.⁷⁹⁾⁸⁰⁾

“Pepe does not have the baggage here that he does in the 'real world,’ and I like working with utopians and optimistic freethinkers. There are so many possibilities.”
– Matt Furie⁸¹⁾

Then in 2020, the Feels Good Man documentary was released, which explains Furie's battle against this far-right depiction, included an out-of-place Pepecash segment, and mainly revealed that Furie had no internet skills. This is further confirmed in a 2021 Twitch stream with Trihex where Furie was bewildered at the chat spamming Pepe emotes since nobody ever told him about this side of Pepe before.⁸²⁾

From there, Trump lost the 2020 election, Pepe as a far-right icon lost momentum, and Furie unfortunately began to invest in cryptocurrency and hop on the NFT bandwagon.⁸³⁾⁸⁴⁾ As for Pepe's reputation, he is a reaction image once more. Things like “BOOBA”⁸⁵⁾ and “cheesed to meet you”⁸⁶⁾ have nonchalantly spread, while Twitch came up with “Borpa”⁸⁷⁾ and “borpaSpin”⁸⁸⁾ shortly after.

• Furie was born on August 14, 1979 at the >Ohio State University hospital.⁸⁹⁾⁹⁰⁾
  • In context, Furie was presumably 26 when he started Boy's Club in 2005, aged 37 during the 2016 shitshow, and aged 41 when he went into NFTs, which lines up with him being Gen X.
• Back on November 7, 2016,⁹¹⁾ Matt Furie held an Answer Time session on Tumblr⁹²⁾ where he filled almost three pages of his blog, answering “Why?” in at least 24 different ways.
  • This bewildered me for the longest time and I thought Furie went into a weird depression spiral, but it turns out that Furie was attempting to be poetic while still lacking internet experience.
• In 2016, Time selected Pepe the Frog as the #1 “Most Influential Fictional Characters of 2016”,⁹³⁾ though the publication explains that it was due to his recent role as a far-right icon.
• Between 2016 to 2020, I do have a few theories about Pepe the Frog's usage on the internet.
  • Pepe could've been used as a political dogwhistle on Twitch with the intent to make out-of-touch liberals look hysterical,⁹⁴⁾ but nothing led up to this and emotes like “Groyper” were pulled.⁹⁵⁾
  • The introduction of Pepe in the Hong Kong protests was unusual and looked like a signal that the “pro-democracy” protests were organized by the United States, but there's no evidence of this, and everyone conveniently forgot after the HKSAR national security law went in effect.
• On the South Korean internet, Pepe has seen a recent 2020 uptick in usage on DC Inside and Ilbe.
  • Regarding politics, the conservative stronghold Daegu is associated with a black-skinned Pepe, while the liberal Jeolla region⁹⁶⁾ is associated with a red-skinned, communist Pepe.

• Wojak

• Pepe the Frog on Wikipedia - The article's scope was a bit too small in some areas.
• @Matt_Furie on Twitter - The original Pepe cartoonist, now an avid NFT shill.