Wait is Pepe controversial? I always just interpreted it as an internet meme. One of the many faces of the internet

I consider it to be a popular dogwhistle for those who use hate speech. I don’t think it’s bigoted to use, but if I see someone using it I think they might be a bigot

I know pepe didn’t start out that way, and I know the original creator has tried to reclaim him. But for far too long he was linked to internet nazi incel bs, and I can’t really get past it.

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.

not necessarily anymore, but it’s still popular mostly among nazis and chuds and its still a staple of 4chan culture.

its true that there was some movement to “take it back”, and it worked somewhat, but in practice i always double take when people use it because the aforementioned association is still going strong.

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.

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 but I think it’s ugly as hell and I think that is a plenty good reason to want it to go away forever.

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 it was just high jacked by the right just like they have currently high jacked soyboy wojack memes.

I feel like it’s one of those things that started on 4chan so yeah probably

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 sentences. When pepe is used to convey hate, then he is quite literally a hate symbol, but not in any other.

I consider Pepe to be a picture. How the hell is it speech in any way?

No. Quit letting the far right edgelords do whatever they want with culture.