Not on its own. If someone’s using it a lot and giving other hate signals, I’ll suspect that they know what they’re doing.
No, Pepe is ours
No but I think it’s ugly as hell and I think that is a plenty good reason to want it to go away forever.
Context matters. If it’s alongside some alt right bigotry, then yes. If it’s just a dumb joke about frens and feels, then not at all.
Just how the Christian cross can be a hate sign or a sign of community. In vacuum these are just symbols a collection of shapes and color. Much like these individual pictographic letters combine to make words and ssemtancws. When pepe is used to convey hate, then he is quite literally a hate symbol.
By itself? No. The original character was not political, the community that made “feels bad man” famous as a meme wasn’t political, and many, many, many of the variants still around split off before it was seen as political. Even in the political sphere, there are plenty of left-wing variants too which I would not consider hate speech. A frogpost without context will make me examine someone closer for other clues, but it’s not inherently political or hateful.
No it was just high jacked by the right just like they have currently high jacked soyboy wojack memes.
No. Some time ago on Lemmy I had to explain the same thing to someone who was trying to make the claim that “glowie” was a racist term because it was used next to the N word in it’s first use by Terry A. Davis even though the context showed that “glowie” was being used as a derogatory term for members of the CIA and not people of color.
I had to explain that if someone used the F slur next to the word “rainbow” that does not make “rainbow” derogatory, and if it did, we would have a big problem with many, many more words.
The mistake people make here seems to be related to a composition/division logical fallacy in which they think that just because one thing is associated with another thing in specific context, the context of the second thing must be applied to the entirety of the first thing without exception, when this is not the case at all.
The exact same idea applies to Pepe. Pepe was not made as a hate symbol, but under some contexts has been used as one. This does not mean that Pepe is always a symbol of hate without exception.
No. Why would you let the nazis to appropriate anything they want?
Do a reverse uno card and go appropriate some of their shit. Like antifastonetoss. Take everything out of their hands.
I feel like it’s one of those things that started on 4chan so yeah probably
No, and the original artist encourages people to pry him back from the bigots. Check out the documentary “Feels Good Man”
It’s a great doc. It was on PBS for a while.
WHAT TF DID I MISS??? How is pepe hate speech?? someone pls explain in comments
Alt-right fucks took to using pepe as a neo-nazi symbol. Just par for the course. Take something and then use it enough to pervert it’s meaning so that when others see it they think Nazi stuff instead of any original meaning. Also see the swastika, don’t tread on me, the punisher symbol, and the okay sign to name a few.
what the fuck
I would agree with others in this thread though. It doesn’t mean every use is a dog whistle. Fight and take it back. Fascists deserve nothing but to get punched. Pepe can have a better ending.
People who use it are either using it as a way of displaying that they’re bigots, or they don’t care about the association with bigots.
There’s not really any positive way to use it, so it’s a giant red flag whenever I see it.
The only problem with this line of thinking is that it empowers bigots to continue to subvert any character or symbol they choose.
I’d rather see those symbols used more often in ways that fight bigotry than to give in to that manipulation.That would be great if anyone was actually attemping to reclaim pepe, but in practice, more often than not, the red flags are right.
This is how I see it too.
If not for association with the alt right, I at least see it as a sign of “I am a terminally online dork who tries to portray myself as lovably pitiful so as to manipulate others” or “this is a crutch for my low self esteem” or just…well. Some of this is from my own personal biases and experiences, I’ll be forward about that.
So to make a long story short, even without Nazi associations, there’s no good way to use a Pepe in my experience, and no one I know who uses him frequently has been a good person.
Peak. Right here is the person who is weak and ruins it for everyone.
Thank you for proving my point
🤣👌👍🤡
No but I associate him with the alt right imbeciles who appropriated him.
No
Only the people who use it as such.
