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For Ryan it isn't just about the quality of your content but your behaviour as an individual. He references @kallmekris, a creator whos created several loveable return characters including a taxing toddler: "While hilarious in her own right, [she] is incredibly likeable. She's gracious with her fans, she works clean, doesn't roast or criticise anybody with her comedy, and that is why she has over 10 million followers."

He sees TikTok as having created a new comedy genre; a non-punchline-focused trend he calls "existential chuckle". "We are not in the business of belly laughs," he says, "we are in the business of, 'Huh, that's quite funny'." In a world where there often isnt much to laugh about and plenty of existential dread it's of little surprise a Gen Z app has taken to artists like Ryan so readily.

The year meme culture went 3D for good

We no longer live in a 2D meme world of Pepe the Frog, the boyfriend checking out another woman and that man with the weird crinkly face laughing at things. The realm of visual online artistry now not only demands PhotoShop, but video editing skills. Many argue that Vine did this first, but the caveat here is that Vine died while TikTok, which was the fastest app in the history of social media to reach a billion user downloads, isnt going anywhere. Creators like Robert Tolppi have sent eerie, bad 3D renderings viral on DeepTok [Deep TikTok], the TikTok community known for promulgating a number of bizarre videos, the comments sections of which users gather in to revel in their internet weirdness. This is the year that the internet got "deepfried": a phrase that refers to the use of deliberate glitches and creepy voice deepening effects that turned TikTok feeds into a sort of Orwellian doomscape. But for fun. Given how much the rest of the world felt like it was turning into an actual Orwellian doomscape, it makes sense that kids would want to create their own one, within their control, and within which they could connect. Many of the deep-fried videos failed to reach virality outside of the app unlike many other TikToks this year, suggesting that the odder niches of meme culture only work when partnered with TikToks mysterious algorithm, much like how others only work in certain groups or subreddits.

A new way for independent musicians to go viral

The promotion of trends on TikTok has gone hand in hand with its creation of the audio meme; the mass reproduction of the same sound to all of these magical trends. Sometimes the sounds are from well-known artists, some of whom deliberately court TikTokkers to try and boost marketing on the platform, which is exactly what Drake did with Toosie Slide. But what has been a distinct component of TikTok culture this year has been the virality of unknown singers and artists who've been lifted from obscurity to views and listens in their millions.

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Pepe the Frog is possibly one of the more ubiquitous internet icons of the past decade and ... [+] responsible for introducing innumerable people for better or worse to the field of political memes. (Photo by Anthony Kwan/Getty Images)

Its internet lore that President Donald Trump was memed into office. If thats true, theres only one meme responsible: Pepe the Frog. By the time President Trump tweeted his likeness in the form of cartoon amphibian in 2016, artist Matt Furies peaceful frog character had evolved and mutated in Internet communities from pacifist stoner to a symbol of hate.

Both the artist and the cartoon character are the subjects of Arthur Joness Feels Good Man, a comprehensive and disturbing tale of how the Internet operated in the 2010s. Pepe the Frog is possibly one of the more ubiquitous internet icons of the past decade and responsible for introducing innumerable people for better or worse to the field of political memes.

Trying to make sense of a meme is like explaining abstract art to some who doesnt visit museums, but that doesnt mean Arthur Joness Feels Good Man is inaccessible. In its hour and half run time, Feels Good Man draws in all the disparate elements that make a meme as ubiquitous, and culturally insidious, as Pepe the Frog. The elements illuminated in the film have been the subject of study for the last several years as the reach of the icon ranges from historical coincidences to the blockchain of rare Pepes that made their way into the cryptocurrency market. Its an overwhelming story filled with terms (NEET, dank, Kek, meme magic, Alpha, Beta males) likely little known outside the webs communities.

To explore the evolution of the cartoon character, Feels Good Man focuses on the trials of the seemingly ambivalent artist Matt Furie and his eventual exasperation as his favorite character becomes misused and weaponized by the far-right and later amplified by the conspiracist internet personality Alex Jones. Throughout the film, director Arthur Jones depicts Furie as a willfully powerless creator. At one point, Furie describes himself as a spectator to how things evolved on the internet. As a result, its easy to see Furie as nave over the course of the film as he tends to believe that the distortion and dangerous use of Pepe will run its course, but Furies emotional attachment blurs his reactions to the travails of his character.

Feels Good Man asks if redemption is possible for both the art and the artist in our current moment. Joness approach is holistic, and the film contains interviews from meme scholars, psychologists, occultists, forum posters, and Matt Furies friends and loved ones. Perhaps its the only way to tell a story as strange as the Pepe the Frog narrative and the artist that conceived him.

The film, released for digital download on September 4th and set to air on PBS in October, can be utilized as a retrospective of how we got to now or at the very least, a cautionary tale about art, internet communities, and digital linguistics. Pepes original transformation from pacifist frog to meme comes from Pepes iconic phrase Feels Good Man rather than the image. Like most digital memes, the derivatives of linguistic phrase amplified the image.

In the mid-2010s, an era of commodification moved Pepe from the fringes to the mainstream. Joness storytelling of this moment provides some of the most clarity in the film. 4channers believed the Pepe belonged to them and when celebrities like Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj posted Pepes on their own, the threat of loss encouraged the iconic perversion. From there, meme creators repurposed Pepe as a symbol for Trumps darker rhetoric, but it was finally codified as an alt-right meme when Hillary Clintons campaign provided an explainer of how the meme was misused. It gave validity to Pepe the Frogs use as an icon of hate and racism.

Furie attempted to end the controversy by killing Pepe the Frog in 2018, but by that point, a large portion of 160 million analyzed memes have used Pepe as a disturbing image. An interviewee named Pizza explains that the Pepe we see on 4chan now has been so far removed from the original that the Pepe Matt was killing was his own.

Feels Good Man is also an examination of the wider grift industry that permeated and formed many of the tactics of the far-right. In the climax of the film, Furie successfully sues Alex Jones to prevent further use of the Pepe image. While Arthur Jones somewhat downplays the success of the lawsuit as a small cash payout, Furies win against Alex Jones sets a precedent of memes and legal rights. While Pepe the Frog is still in the digital wild, Alex Jones is slowly receding into the background static of the conspiratorial web.

The epilogue of the film points to a possible redemption of Pepe the Frog as an icon of hope and resilience in Hong Kong and perhaps thats true, but the story clearly isnt over yet. Regardless, the film is a valuable document of a confusing time in history and in its short run time, provides an extraordinary story that needed to be told.

Feels Good Man is available for digital download on September 4th and will be aired on PBS on October 19th at 10pm.

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The Full Tale Of Pepe The Frogs Journey From Innocent ...

By ninabeik

If you are reading this, you have probably seen Pepe the Frog before. You know, that little green b*stard thats been terrorizing every conceivable social media platform since the 2010s. I think anyone thats come up with the internet has sent and/or received a Pepe meme at some point. I know I have. The interesting thing that sets Pepe apart from other memes is the trajectory he has gone on and his longevity. Some memes have very short shelf lives and are forgotten within a matter of weeks, while other memes have a longevity about them that allows them to remain relevant for months or even years. Something about that funky little frog made him so adaptable that to this day youll still see iterations of the Pepe meme around. During his many years on the internet, Pepe has gone on quite the journey. He started as a harmless little meme frog and eventually turned into a registered hate symbol.Yeah, you read that right the epic funny meme frog is a hate symbol.

In this blog post, I want to give an overview of how the Pepe the Frog meme went from harmless internet funny, to a symbol of anti-Semitism and white nationalism, and finally a symbol of hope?

Strap in for quite the wild ride.

Pepe the Frog started as a silly character in a comic called Boys ClubbyMatt Furie. That poor man did not know the can of worms he just opened. Furie posted his comics to MySpace and from there it spiraled. Initially, the image of Pepe was used innocently on fitness forums, believe it or not. Over the years the meme migrated over to 4chan. Pepe the Frog became immensely popular on 4chan, inspiring the creation of many board posts and Pepe derivatives. As is the nature of a meme, it is to be constantly reimagined and evolve along with the online landscape they are in. So, thats what Pepe did, he evolved along with the landscape on 4chan.

4chan is an anonymous image-based internet forum that is known for being quite offensive. Throughout the years, 4chan has been accused of being a breeding ground for racism, anti-Semitism, and all the other bad -isms. Pepe became somewhat of a 4chan mascot. The memes, initially, were not explicitly racist ortoooffensive. He was just a sad frog. It wasnt until Pepe started breaking out into the mainstream that 4chan users started to go to extreme lengths to create the most offensive Pepe memes possible. Pepe the Frog and 4chan felt intrinsically connected to the users and now all these filthy normies were coming in and making him a mainstream Facebook meme. Tie this in with the absolute media chaos that was the 2016 American presidential elections and you had the perfect recipe for disaster. A movement began on 4chan to turn Pepe the Frog into a white supremacist symbol and tie him to the Trump campaign. This led to an onslaught of racist Pepe memes being posted online. Pepe also bled over into real-life as some users went as far as wearing Pepe masks at rallies.Trump himself even retweeted a Pepe meme. This was 4chans way of reclaiming Pepe, by all means necessary. If he became a horrific symbol of hate, then 4chan would get their mascot back.

Now, whatreallygave this movement legitimacy was the media. As it was so tied to the presidential elections, every news outlet imaginable jumped on the story.Hillary Clintons campaign website even added a page detailing how harmful Pepe was(the original is no longer up). I think this is where the disconnect between the mainstream media and internet culture comes in. Im pretty confident that to most of us, Pepe is just a slightly dated meme frog. And that is all hes ever been to the majority of people whove spread Pepe memes. The people weaponizing Pepe were but a very vocal minority, however, many news outlets never addressed this vital little nuance. Anyone familiar with online culture would know that all trolls want attention, once you acknowledge them youve already lost. The media did this on a worldwide scale by reporting on the issue in a very sensationalized manner. This all eventually led toPepe the Frog being placed on the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) registry as a hate symbol for racism and anti-Semitism

Obviously, what this group of 4chan users was doing was wrong and harmful to many people. It is hard to deny, however, that the mainstream media played an enormous role in the movement spreading as far as it did. Pepe is not inherently racist and he never was. Even the ADL website disclaims that in most contexts, Pepe is not meant to be a hate symbol of any kind. In the face of overdramatized reporting and a perhaps generational gap in understanding online culture, such nuances are easily lost. And that, is a very dangerous thing.

That is not how Pepes story ends, however. In a turn of events no one saw coming, Pepe became a symbol of hope.The Hong Kong protests that started in 2019 started using Pepe as their mascot.He symbolizes youth participation within the movement and is widely beloved as protestors spray paint him on government buildings in protest, have Pepe the Frog plushies, and wear Pepe the Frog masks. This iteration of Pepe was devoid of any racist connotations and perfectly showcases that context, does in fact matter.

Let me know what this insane series of events made you feel! Did you even know about Pepe being a hate symbol?

This post was previously published on digmedia.lucdh.nl under a Creative Commons License.

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May countless blessings be bestowed upon whichever young people coined the online terms copium and hopium, because if theres anything we desperately needed in 2020, its a shorthand for how pride cometh before the chagrin-inducing fall.

For those unaware, copium is a portmanteau of cope and opium, while hopium is one of hope and opium. Opponents of President Donald Trump have spent the past four years taking copious (heh) amounts of the fictional drug copium, while his sycophantic supporters have been on a four-year bender of its counterpart. To medicate with copium is to accept or bargain with defeat, and to ingest hopium is to gloat in the face of your opponents while you revel in sweet victory.

Supporters of Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden have spent this past week chasing the hopium dragon as their candidate became president-elect, and as if to intensify the schadenfreude, they have even appropriated the likeness of alt-right icon Pepe the Frog to do it. The most shared of these memes is one of a forlorn Pepe breathing copium via a nasal mask, but others have taken more creative liberty in portraying the MAGA crowd as sore losers in the violent throes of grief.

This online relishing of the defeat reached meteoric highs last week as a Twitter account with the handle @CopingMAGA already attracted over 56,000 followers by posting screenshots of pro-Trump meltdowns on right-wing hotbeds such as 4chan. On Reddit, left-leaning subreddits are gawking at the post-election ramblings of right-wing influencers like Charlie Kirk and Steven Crowder.

But outside of this churlish internet bubble, others are pleading for more grace and civility. In a Nov. 3 editorial in The Forward, veteran journalist Jodi Rudoren pleaded, If your guy wins, dont gloat. After Bidens Nov. 7 victory, ABC News correspondent Steve Osunsami tweeted, If youre celebrating, remember that you have friends who feel like you did in 2016.

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Conversely, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib tweeted a gif with the caption, Me, trying my best not to rub it in. I am really trying, but it is so hard. Silicon Valley actor Kumail Nanjiani also took to Twitter to say, We must heal. But first, we must gloat. Meanwhile, ABC News reported that a voter fraud prevention hotline manned by the Trump campaign has been flooded with prank calls mocking the president for his defeat.

Call it classless to succumb to such pettiness, but you would be hard-pressed to argue that Trump and his supporters havent engaged in similar behavior. The president frequently stroked his batshit crazy ego by waxing nostalgic about his 2016 victory against Hillary Clinton. His supporters called dissenting voices triggered snowflakes and accused them of having Trump derangement syndrome, and no female protester could ever let their passions take the wheel without the potential consequence of being turned into an alt-right meme.

Live by the sword, die by the sword. These are the words Jesus of Nazareth said to one of his disciples after he struck a servant of the high priest with a Liberal Tears coffee mug.

If youre a Trump supporter who is tapping into the worlds limited copium supply, let this humbling experience be a valuable lesson on the dangers of hubris. If youre one of millions of anti-Trump Americans basking in the Audacity of Hopium, try not to overdose.

Keep the Dallas Observer Free... Since we started the Dallas Observer, it has been defined as the free, independent voice of Dallas, and we would like to keep it that way. Offering our readers free access to incisive coverage of local news, food and culture. Producing stories on everything from political scandals to the hottest new bands, with gutsy reporting, stylish writing, and staffers who've won everything from the Society of Professional Journalists' Sigma Delta Chi feature-writing award to the Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism. But with local journalism's existence under siege and advertising revenue setbacks having a larger impact, it is important now more than ever for us to rally support behind funding our local journalism. You can help by participating in our "I Support" membership program, allowing us to keep covering Dallas with no paywalls.

Garrett Gravley was born and grew up in Dallas. He mostly writes about music, but veers into arts and culture, local news and politics. He is a graduate of the University of North Texas and has written for the Dallas Observer since October 2018.

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Democrats and Republicans Are Accusing Each Other of Being Under the Influence of Fake Drugs - Dallas Observer

A social media post Saturday by Iowa State Universitys College Republicans asking people to arm up, tweeted after Democrat Joe Biden was declared the winner of the presidential election, prompted an ISUstatement that university policy prohibits student organizations from suggesting armed activity.

Just as news broke around 11:30 a.m.Saturday that Biden was the president-elect,the Iowa State College Republicans' Twitter account tweeted, "Everyone, you must arm up, expect these people to attempt to destroy your life, the elites want revenge on us." Some Iowa State students viewed the tweet as a threat of violence to come.

However, Ryan Hurley, Iowa State College Republicanspresident, said the tweet was meant to support everyone's Second Amendment rights.

"Our thought in writing the tweet was to support everyone in their right to bear arms," Hurley wrote in an email. "People have sickly twisted it. Violence is not our intent."

Iowa State spokespersonAngie Huntsaid the university was aware of the social media post.

"Any suggestion of armed activity by an Iowa State student organization is prohibited by university policy," Hunt said in a statement. "Any conduct that violates university policy will be addressed in an appropriate manner."

Hunt declined to say whether any students mightbe disciplined.

Jo Allen, asenior journalism major andhead organizer for Ames BLM, said she did not know the true intent of the tweet but felt threatened by it. She said she was givingher personal opinion and did not want to speak for the group.

"To me as a queer Black woman, that felt like a message that was threatening," Allen said. "As an affiliate of Iowa State, that is not an appropriate message to be sending out."

Allen said the Iowa State College Republicans and their members have long historiesof being rude on social media to Black, female andLGBTQ students and others. A September tweet asked about U.S. Rep.Ilhan Omar, D-Minnesota a naturalized citizen who came to the U.S. from Somalia in her childhood as a refugee "We have these people coming in here who hate us, undermine us, and cheat us. Time to #DeportOmar."

An October tweet described nonbinary,a gender identity that is neither male nor female,as a "mental illness."

On Election Day, the group tweeted an image in which Midwestern states were covered in images of Pepe the frog, a cartoon coopted by white supremacists for homophobic and racist uses. TheAnti-Defamation League declared Pepe the Frog ahate symbolin 2016.

Whether the College Republicansmean these things or not, words matter, Allen said.

"I am sick of having to educate misinformed people, having to fight for my life, constantly live in fear because some people don't accept me," Allen said. "These words mean so much more than they recognize."

Hurley declined to say who wrote Saturday's tweet or if the group would issue an apology or felt it needed to issue one.

Iowa State College Republicans received multiple death threats before and after this tweet, Hurley said.

"We have to walk home all of our members in groups to ensure protection," Hurley said. "We always alert people to the rights granted to them by U.S. Constitution. This tweet is nothing to get worked up about."

Philip Joens covers breaking news for The Des Moines Register. He can be reached at 515-443-3347at pjoens@registermedia.com or on Twitter @Philip_Joens.

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Iowa State College Republicans' call for people to 'arm up' after Biden's win prompts statement from university - Des Moines Register