Theory of Knowledge - Course Companion for Students Marija Uzunova Dang Arvin Singh Uzunov Dang

we have to talk about a frog. Pepe was
First
by Matt Furie in 2005 in his comic
drawn
Club and was turned into a meme on
Boy’s
boards and some not exactly family-
message
corners of the internet. Soon there
friendly
Sad Pepe, Angry Pepe, Smug Pepe and
was
Pepe was tweeted into mainstream
more.
by Katy Perry, followed by
prominence
others including the Russian Embassy
many
the UK. Pepe went from fame to infamy
in
being reclaimed by the digital alt-right
after
the /pol/ board of 4chan and /r/The_
on
on Reddit, where Pepes, including
Donald
transgressive and offensive ones,
some
deployed in the Great Meme War. It is
were
to say when things peaked, but the
difficult
campaign releasing an explainer on
Clinton
the Frog on its official website might
Pepe
been it. “That’s Pepe. He’s a symbol
have
with white supremacy” reads the
associated
which continues in questionand-answer
condemnation,
style until the stand-in reader
“[t]his is horrifying” (Chan 2016).
concludes,
weeks later, Pepe became an official
Two
symbol and Pepe memes with racist
hate
other bigoted content were added to the
and
League’s database. Furie
Anti-Defamation
hard to reclaim Pepe, launching the
tried
campaign in partnership with the
#SavePepe
League to get Pepe back
Anti-Defamation
online bigots. As you can probably
from
this has not worked.
guess,
we see reflected in the Pepe story
What
always political in a wider sense than
was
Figure 2.3 In 2019–2020, Pepe was used by pro-democracy
mania exceeded any expectations of
Harambe
participation. If your digital detox
popular
with the week when the Harambe
coincided
took off, you would have returned to a
meme
baffling internet where everyone wanted
very
be in on the joke. Transgression has long
to
a tactic for social resistance, powerfully
been
often by young people, to
deployed,
and destabilize stale social norms
undermine
cultural taboos. It is not difficult to mock
and
online world where viral content and
an
on social networks regularly drown
outrage
information about global issues of
out
urgentimportance.
are transgressive memes, with their cynical
So,
confronting intellectual conformity
mockery,
drawing attention to the hypocrisies of
and
political discourse? Or is it transgression
online
its own sake—just “for the lulz”—without
for
intended political outcome? Even
any
are we reading too much into what is
worse,
overt bigotry?
effectively
we answer these questions matters.
How
memes that challenge
Anti-establishment
and are critical of entrenched
conventions,
positions, expressed in an aesthetic
political
language that appeals to and sometimes is
and
fully grasped by young people, can be a
only
III. Methods and tools
III. Methods and tools
When a gorilla named Harambe was shot dead at
the Cincinnati Zoo that year after a child fell into his
enclosure, the usual cycles of public displays of
outrage online began as expected with inevitable
competitive virtue signaling. At rst, emotional and
outraged people online blamed the child’s parents
for the gorilla’s death, with some even petitioning to
have the parents prosecuted for their neglect. But
then a kind of giddy ironic mocking of the social
media spectacle started to take over. The Harambe
meme soon became the perfect parody of the
sentimentality and absurd priorities of Western
liberal performative politics and the online mass
hysteria that often characterized it.
(Nagle 2017)
presidential campaigns and elections.
protesters in Hong Kong as a symbol of their resistance against
China’s central government
powerful way of communicating about politics.
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