Pepe's story is that of transcendence and of persecution. What once started as a humble cartoon character for a web cartoon called "Boy's Club" quickly became something much more popular when Pepe found success on anonymous
imageboards, 4chan most notably, online. Edits followed of him as his popularity grew, and the character who was once only limited to what his creator depicted had new life breathed into him from the rest of the internet.
Pepe remained a popular character on imageboards and forums online, remaining relatively obscure and known only to members that browsed those communities, until recent years, when the mainstream discovered the
innocent "Sad Frog". Little did these unaware individuals know, they were looking at an already established meme. Many edits resulted from these "normies", as they were known in the same communities that often
made use of Pepe for years now, and gained relatively good attention on social media, Twitter perhaps most prominently, for a time until, like most memes with normies, they forgot about Pepe and moved on to the next meme.
However, Pepe's success would not end there, nor would he fade back into obscurity. He would only grow stronger as the 2016 Elections approached.
(Rare picture of Pepe growing stronger above, photographer said to have died of ungodly amount of high energy shortly after picture was taken)
Donald Trump was an unexpected candidate who had the seemingly effortless talent to generate many memes. Some have called him, especially in his initial running in the Republican
primaries, "Meme Man 2016". Now you might be asking to yourself, "What does Donald Trump have to do with Pepe The Frog?" and this would be an understandable question. Donald Trump
himself has given attention to Pepe twice, and many edits, often of a rather smug-looking Pepe, with the appearance of Donald Trump have been made of him online. He even once retweeted a pepe edit of himself.
The two would be associated with each other after these events transpired, and even to this day Pepe still has a place in the meme community surrounding Meme Man 2016. As a result of his association
with Donald Trump, coupled with some politically incorrect and racist edits of his visage, he was labeled a hate symbol by the Anti-Defamation League, on par with that of a swastika.
Yes, really. They really believe that some offensive edits turn an entire meme into a symbol of hate speech. Here's a link to the ADL's website if you don't believe me.
http://www.adl.org/combating-hate/hate-on-display/c/pepe-the-frog.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/#.WEhDEbIrKHs
(One of the many times where Pepe and Meme Man 2016 have merged into one being pictured above)
Now I know what you're thinking, "What does that title even mean?", right? Well, this one is perhaps one of the strangest developments and explanations.
Bear with me as I try to explain it. During the 2016 Elections, a Frog God from Ancient Egypt was rediscovered by the same communities that initially used Pepe, going by the name "Kek".
"Kek" had been a phrase used to express laughter in place of "lol" in these anonymous imageboards, which was a funny coincidence that one of the names of this god was named "Kek", and
that the avatar of this god was a man with the head of a frog.
Something more coincidental but more complex to explain was what people interpreted as signs from this supposed god's intervention, so I will do
my best to explain how this works. On these anonymouse imageboards, there is a system to track what post number you were, (for exmaple, that you were the 108094678th post on the site)
and repeating digits happened to be valued more due to their rarity. Leading to users valuing "Dubs" (short for Doubles), two numbers repeating at the end of the post but nowhere else,
(ex: 1084476233, there is only one set of "Dubs" here, the "33", as many users will have the "44" attached to their number due to the amount of posts needed to break that range, but the 33 is unique)
"Trips" (short for Triples) (ex: 1087643456999), "Quads" (short for Quadruples) (ex: 1084476148888), etc. Numbers, and repeating numbers especially, are viewed as significant in Egyptian mythology
as well, another coincidence. Now, "What does all that nonsense have to do with a meme frog?", you might ask. Earlier I wrote about the connection between Donald Trump and Pepe. Pepe
was adopted, jokingly initially, as the supposed "Avatar of Kek", given that Pepe is an anthropomorphic frog. Many supporters of Trump gathered on 4chan and 8chan, both anonymous imageboards,
and expressed desire for trump to win. One facet of "Chan-Culture" are template threads, threads that are made with the same message each time for varying reasons.
One of which was, "If (x repeating #s), (y) will happen". Many more of these threads had been created the closer to the 2016 Election in a hope that they would perhaps "meme" Trump into victory.
Something notable about these threads was that a staggering amount seemed to achieve these hard-to-get repeating numbers, an example pictured here:
Eventually, some users made a joke thread about worshipping Kek in order to peition the god to grant his favor to Trump. Within these threads, an abnormally high amount of repeating
numbers were obtained, always in these "Kek" Threads. Weird enough yet? Well, it gets stranger. As these events were transpiring some users took it upon themselves to investigate more of the frog-god,
and came across something interesting. A relatively unknown single by the name of "Shadilay", performed by the Italian music group "P.E.P.E.". The image on the cover? A frog, holding a magic wand, as if
casting a spell. And the label that published the single? "Magic Sound". At this point, a consensus was reached among the users of these anonymous imageboards: "Meme Magic" was real, and Kek was it's god.
(The song referenced previously, above)
With the concensus reached that Kek is the patron deity of anonymous imageboards, and that through the power of Meme Magic anything, even "memeing" a president into the highest office on Earth,
the Cult of Kek was born, and thus Pepe had completed his apotheosis, and a new god was born among the aether, a god of memes and chaos. It was only fitting his avatar would be that meme, Pepe.
(One artist's rendition of the revived god.)
If any of you have actually read all the way to the bottom of this page, I'm sorry. This took far too long and I have wasted all of your time irrevocably. It wasn't even that great. I haven't even
covered everything I could have, but that would be getting too esoteric and obscure for most of you I imagine.
I hope you enjoyed looking at the memes though.
You can stop reading now.
Do something useful with your life, don't curse yourself to eternity of memery like I have.
Please.
For your family's sake.