Mediaboss Marketing

Shia LaBeouf, Rnkk and Turners ongoing He Will Not Divide Us protest has proven to be divisive. What wasostensibly a place for supporters to congregate and express their disapproval of the election of Donald Trump, and to stand up against the ongoing division faced by US citizens as a result of his rhetoric, eventually became a breeding ground for conflict, and has now been dismantled by users of the controversial anonymous image board 4chan.

Originally staged in Queens, New Yorks Museum of the Moving Image, the live streamed ongoing protest was prematurely shut downin February as a result of the continued unrest, despite LaBeouf, Rnkk and Turner intending for it to remain active for the full four years of Trumps presidency. He Will Not Divide Us was then moved toAlbuquerque, though LaBeouf was again forced to move its location after shots were fired nearby. Eventually LaBeouf changed the protest from a public event to a live streamedvideo of a flag waving in an undisclosed location, though now 4chan users have discovered its whereabouts and replaced it with a flag bearing the alt-rights co-opted Pepe The Frog symbol, along with a Make America Great Again hat.

4chan used contrails and the alignment of the stars to work out the flags location.

Users on 4chan began searching for the location of the flag after analyzing the stars that appeared in the stream during the evening. After determining a general location using the location of the stars, they then used the contrails left by planes that were visible in this stream, comparing them with FAA flight paths to narrow down the position of the flag. A nearby 4chan user then drove around this location, honking his horn until it could be heard in the live stream, until it was eventually found. They then replaced the white He Will Not Divide Us flag with an image of Pepe, the cartoon frog that has been adopted by supporters of the alt-right, along with a MAGA hat for good measure.

The push to ruin LaBeoufs protest, which 4chan users referred to as Capture The Flag, has been one of few moments of solidarity on the site since the US election. As we previously reported,4chan previously made efforts to stand up against politicians and the establishment regardless of its users political inclinations, though the Donald Trump presidency has caused the site to become fractured. Anonymous, the hacktivist collective forged on the image board, has spoken out against its inability to protest Trumps presidency as a result of this division, calling upon its members to still hold the 45th president of the US accountable for his actions. Unfortunately, it appears that the majority have already picked their side, as the continued growth of the alt-right has enveloped channer culture and made the two indistinguishable from one another.

Watch the video of 4chan capturing the flag below:

See the rest here:
4chan Replaces Shia LaBeouf's 'He Will Not Divide Us' Flag With Pepe - Crave Online

Please enable Javascript to watch.

President Donald Trump on Tuesdaytook time away from berating his staff and makingwiretapping claimsto drop in on a group of visiting students from Birmingham Alabamas Briarwood Christian School who weretaking a tour of the White House.

Things stayed pretty on script as Trump invited a 10-year-old to pose with him for the cameras. The touching moment was captured in a brief video posted to CSPAN, which ultimately made its way to their Twitter account.

Largely unnoticed, however, was a curious hand gesture made by the 10-year-oldtoward the end of the footage. In a simpler time, the gesture could have been written off as an ok symbol but not today. The hand movement bears a striking similarity to one that has often been made by the ultimate Trump meme warrior, Pepe the Frog.

The animated frog reached near mythical status during the 2016 campaign, earning a specialcondemnation from Hillary Clinton andhate symbolstatus from the Anti-Defamation League.

While Pepes prominence waned after the election, he is still regularly invoked by provocative right wing pundits. The Gateway Pundits Jim Hoft and Lucian Wintrich, for example, recently flashed the gesture from the White House briefing room, prompting Media Matters toonce again remind everyone that itwas a hand signal associated with the racist Pepe meme.

Its also worth noting that the gesture is widely used by President Trump himself and that the young manmay have just been trying to emulate the President of the United States.

Watch the video above.

[image via screengrab]

Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.com

Continued here:
Is That Cute Kid Trump Met at the White House Today Making the Pepe Symbol? - Mediaite

JO MOIR

Last updated17:25, March 8 2017

Cameron Burnell/ Fairfax NZ

NZ First leader Winston Peters said he knew what a Pepe was when he signed the controversial frog cartoon in his own image at a university event in Wellington on Tuesday night.

Winston Peters is defending autographing a symbol associated with the far rightat a university event saying it was a kind gesture and"meaningless".

The NZ First leader attended a question and answer session as part of Orientation week at Victoria University in Wellington on Tuesday night and was photographed afterwardssigning a Pepe- a cartoon appropriated by groups of people with far-right ideologies.

"A Pepe started off as a pretty innocuous cartoon character and like most modern things they can be distorted, twisted and what-have-you. A guy asked me to, and I know you're going to say that he's racist, well if he's a white racist why would he want Winston Peters to sign his document?" Peters said on Wednesday.

"That's an image that's been used by Trump, anti-Trump, a whole lot of people. It's actually meaningless and for you to say some catastrophic social disaster has occurred because I signed someone's paper - being a nice guy wishing him all the best - is beyond me."

READ MORE: * Winston the crowd pleaser *A coffee with Winston Peters *Winston Peters wants a drastic immigration in reduction *Peters: Interview every migrant

Pepe the frog is an internet meme originally from a comic series. It has since been appropriated by the alt-right - which includes white nationalists- and resulted in the Anti-Defamation League adding the meme to their database of hate symbols last year.

Peters said he knew what a Pepe was - in this case the cartoon was in his own image -and said "it's been used by all sorts of people".

"If it's been used by white supremacists why would they have me sign it? Don't you see the irony in that," he said.

Earlier in the evening Peters had questioned the media's role in a controversial European Students Association club being pressured to shut down.

"I don't know if you saw in Auckland University recently, the European club got shut down. No doubt you all followed it," he told the packed lecture theatre of university students.

"Isn't it amazing? You have got the Maori club, you've got the Chinese club, you've got every sort of club."

The group withdrew from the university after it was attacked for being a white nationalist group.

Peters said despite the Auckland University Students Association making no comments in support of fascism - the NZ Herald and others had deplored the association for not speaking out against it.

On Wednesday Peters stuck by those comments and the "NZ Herald attack on the European club".

-Stuff

See the rest here:
NZ First leader Winston Peters defends signing far-right symbol at ... - Stuff.co.nz

Pepe the Frog's decade-long journey from webcomic character to everyman meme to alleged hate symbol has been a topsy-turvy one, but his importance to the meme economy cannot be denied. The trope of trading and collecting "Rare Pepes," distinctive images of the famous frog, has been part of meme culture for years. And now there's real money behind it.

A February article from Reddit's Meme Insider, a parody trade publication dedicated to serious coverage of memes, explains how the fictitious market for Rare Pepesbecame a booming business.

The piece, by pseudonymous redditor JeffTheDunker, describes how the Rare Pepe economy initially functioned on a system of "Good Boy Points," a largely fictitious currency that people would trade for new and unique images of Pepe. It started out circa 2015 as a 4chan in-joke about an autistic kid who would exchange "Good Boy Points," earned by doing chores for his mom, for precious "chicken tendies," and somehow they became the dominant imaginary currency of the Rare Pepe economy.

Good Boy Points were unsustainable, though, because there was no accountability in the system: Anyone could fabricate their Good Boy Point totals. In short: the points just weren't real.

Additionally, the idea that there was valueeven imaginary or purely social valuein Rare Pepe memes caused the demand for Pepes to go up, and the market to become flooded by new content.

"When [Rare Pepes] breached mainstream media outlets, early adopters and speculators around the globe packed their bags for good, as the Pepe had, in their minds, become useless," JeffTheDunker explains in Meme Insider.

In early 2015, a poster on 4chan's /r9k/ board, incensed at the mainstream popularity Pepe was starting to enjoy, tried to kill the meme by distributing a collection of more than 1,200 Rare Pepes, labeled "the end is nigh, hope you cash out now."

4chan called this Pepe massacre "the Peppening," and it led to posters jokingly watermarking their best Rare Pepes "do not save":

The watermarks obviously did nothing to protect the Pepes, other than making them uglier, and the Rare Pepe economy looked doomed. But what if there were a way to regulate Pepes and make them impossible to copy?

We've seen Rare Pepestraded on Craigslistbefore, where physical drawings or printouts of the frog that were offered in exchange for cold, hard cashsometimes as much as $100. We've even seen them sell on eBay for nearly $100,000probably as a joke. But JeffTheDunker also suggests there's a real demand for unusual digital images of Pepe, even though it seems like those images should be trivial to replicate.

Enter: the blockchain. Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin use it to make sure that digital money is unique to its owner and can't simply be copied or faked, and now it's being applied to Rare Pepes.

A blockchain-based platform called Counterparty lets users make anything into a unique digital token, and "anything" now includes Rare Pepes.

Traders can buy and sell the Pepes using Counterparty currency, but they prefer a cryptocurrency called PepeCash, which currently trades at 302 PepeCash to the dollar.

RarePepeWallet.com

RarePepeWallet.com

The universe of Rare Pepes is constantly expanding, too. There are already more than 500 distinct cards, and collectors cansubmit their ownoriginal Rare Pepes for consideration. All it takes is a payment of 4,000 PepeCash (roughly $13), a dank idea, and some design skills.

The rules for approval are stringent:

This manual approval process means none of the 1,200 compromised Pepes from the 2015 "Peppening" is likely to show up on the site. Some of them may still be dank, but they're no longer rare.

One thing you'll notice about the selection of Pepe cardsand the Rare Pepe trading community at largeis that they don't carry even a whiff of Pepe's status as an alt-right, white supremacist, pro-Donald-Trump icon.

"Most of the community don't think Pepe is an alt-right thing. Some (like me) think that we should Make Pepe Great Again and free him of that connotation," Pepe trading enthusiast Django Bates told the Daily Dot via email. "Also, you have to be aware that Pepe as a symbol of hate and racism by alt-rights is a merely North American thing. The rest of the world does not see Pepe in that context. But our Rare Pepe trading community is global. We have people from Japan, Spain, France, the U.S., Switzerland (myself), Russia, Turkey, South Africa and many other countries.

"Pepe is a meme. If alt-right idiots use it for there bullshit, then be it. Pepe is much greater and does not care about them. Pepe is a mirror. And a mirror is not racist, just because a racist is using it."

So, instead of Trumpist Pepes, you'll find card designs like My Little Pepe, which might be the most expensive Rare Pepe ever sold. It recently changed hands for 1 million PepeCash (currently about $3,300).

rarepepewallet.com

The proud owner of My Little Pepe, alias American Pegasus, told the Daily Dot, "Only one of these exist, and it belongs to a tier of the rarest pepes of all - uniques with only a single card issued."

rarepepewallet.com

"But that Pepe wasn't listed for sale in Counterparty," American Pegasus continued. "Instead the seller only would accept cold hard Pepecash. A million of them to be exact. And so I'm darn glad I had some handy, and was able to score the trade."

We're a long way from Good Boy Points now. The Rare Pepe economy is based on real money, and PepeCash is starting to take off. A recent price jump seems to have been triggered by a January Vice articleand an article Wednesday in France's Le Mondethat introduced Rare Pepe Wallets toa new group of meme fanatics.

Unlike most other digital currencies, this one is tied to the enthusiasm for an underlying product: Pepes. Even though you don't needPepeCash to buy Pepes, Pepe enthusiast find it nice to own for a number of reasons.

"Pepecash offers a fun and abstract way to value Rare Pepes apart from their underlying Counterparty value," American Pegasus explained. "As we know, with money, the value is in the utility. There are several exciting Pepecash-only features being planned, such as an entire exchange based off Pepecash and a Pepestarter crowdfunding platform. Ultimately it's best for the Pepeverse to have a highly liquid asset like this that can act as a base token for all things Pepe."

No matter how much money you dump into Rare Pepes, though, you'll never own them all. There are a handful of one-of-a-kind Pepes, and some of their owners may have lost the passphrases to their Pepe wallets or may never sell their precious rares.

"In what can be seen as a satirical jab at this growing [altcoin] culture, Rare Pepes create a metaphorical representation of the pump and dump absurdity and legitimizes it through the use of the Bitcoin blockchains immutability," Bitcoinist's Ryan Strauss wrote in November.

The people trading Rare Pepes and PepeCash don't see them as just another flash-in-the-pan alternative currency, though.

"I deeply believe that it is a lot more interesting as Dogecoin, which was only a currency," Bates told the Daily Dot. "This is not just a currency. It is Blockchain driven meme assets you really can own. It is also helping to develop Counterparty, the protocol that is used to create and trade these assets."

On the Rare Pepe Traders group chat, there's plenty of excitement about the PepeCash boom, but it's also clear that the traders and card creators have a passion for the meme.

"With pepetrading there are several things coming together as an extra: Memepower, Curiosity, Human nature of collecting all sorts of stuff, Hope for profit, Community, Interest in Blockchain Technology and above all - the lust to make fun about everything and everybody," Bates wrote. "It's the mix of it all."

One Rare Pepe designer, Nymity Nymz, told Le Monde,"I think these are just the beginnings of anindustry," and said it's even possible he could live on his Pepes someday.

Nymz, who described himself to RarePepeNews.com as a "Rapper, Ghost writer, FinTech Guru,"also told the site that the reason he creates Rare Pepes is "for 2020."

A Rare Pepe, he said, "is something that has the potential to outlive us all."

Read this article:
The Rare Pepe economy is real, and there's serious money behind it - The Daily Dot

Lithuanian nationalists carrying a picture merging Pepe the Frog and Kazys Skirpa in Kaunas, Feb. 16, 2017. (Defending History)

(JTA) Lithuanian ultranationalists marched near execution sites of Jews with banners celebrating a pro-Nazi collaborationist who called for ethnic cleansing and a symbol popular with members of the U.S. alt-right movement.

Approximately 170 people attended Thursdays annual march in Kaunas, Lithuanias second city that is also known as Kovno, the website Defending History reported.

The main banner featured a picture of the collaborationist Kazys Skirpa modified to resemble Pepe the Frog, a cartoon figure that was used by hate groups in the United States during the 2016 presidential elections, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

The banner also included a quote attributed to the Pepe-like portrait of Skirpa, an envoy of the pro-Nazi movement in Lithuania to Berlin, that read Lithuania will contribute to new and better European order.

Skirpa, who has a street named for him in Kaunas, elevated anti-Semitism to a political level that could have encouraged a portion of Lithuanias residents to get involved in the Holocaust, the Genocide and Resistance Research Center of Lithuania asserted in 2015. But Skirpa proposed to solve the Jewish problem not by genocide but by the method of expulsion from Lithuania, the center said.

The procession passed near the Lietovus Garage, where in 1941 locals butchered dozens of Jews. Thousands more were killed in an around Kaunas by local collaborators of the Nazis and by German soldiers in the following months.

Kaunas is ground zero of the Lithuanian Holocaust, Dovid Katz, a U.S.-born scholar and the founder of Defending History, told JTA on Friday. He condemned local authorities for allowing the march by folks who glorify the very Holocaust-collaborators, theoreticians and perpetrators who unleashed the genocide locally. Katz was one of five people who attended the march to protest and document it.

Lithuania is the only country that officially defines its domination by the former Soviet Union as a form of genocide. The name of the state-funded entity that wrote about Skirpa in 2005 refers both to the Holocaust and the so-called Soviet occupation.

The Museum of Genocide Victims in Vilnius, which until 2011did not mentionthe more than200,000 Lithuanian Jews who died in the Nazi Holocaust, was established in 1992 to memorialize Lithuanians killed by the Nazi, but mostly Soviet, states.

Another placard seen at the march on Feb. 16, one of Lithuanias two independence days, featured a list of 33 names, supposedly of Jews who allegedly were involved in Soviet repression. Information on Jews and Vanagaite, the poster also read. In previous years, marchers also displayed Nazi swastikas.

Vanagaite referred to Ruta Vanagaite, a Lithuanian writer who last year co-authored an influential book about the Holocaust in Lithuania with Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. The book triggered an acrimonious public debate about the longtime taboo issue of local complicity in the Holocaust.

Read the original post:
Lithuanian nationalists celebrate Holocaust-era quisling, Pepe the Frog near execution site - Jewish Telegraphic Agency