Pepe The Frog and Martin Luther Spread Change and Hate

On the surface, Pepe the Frog and Martin Luther have nothing in common. Luther, a professor who took on the Roman Catholic Church in 1517 by nailing his 95 theses to the church door is nothing of the likes of a weed smoking, Internet frog. However, they both have ‘gone viral’ in their own media ecologies. Using the third articulation regarding how spatio-temporal dynamics can impact how the message is spread, we will look specifically at the relations of creativity and production, relations of distribution and circulation, and relations of consumption and reception of both Pepe the Frog and Martin Luther.

Pepe the Frog was not always a symbol of white ethno-nationalism. In its original production, Pepe was the epitome of a college ‘bro’. Created in 2005 by Matt Furie, Pepe’s adventures included going to the bathroom and pulling funny pranks on his friends. It was created for a good laugh between friends, produced in Microsoft Paint and posted online, or printed at a local Kinkos. This production was very cheap, and did not take a large amount of manual labour (Frank, 2016). Pepe’s production could not have been more different than that of Luther’s 95 theses, and resulting pamphlets. Luther’s theses condemned the Church of indulgences and resulted in the need for production of pamphlets to spread information. These pamphlets however were produced in cast-type with eight to sixteen pages, in fifteen cities, with around ten thousand copies in each city (Mohn, 2016). While Pepe produced in a matter of minutes, Luther’s pamphlets would have taken weeks to months to produce.

Luther’s pamphlets were distributed in surrounding European towns by means of the physical pamphlet as well as people who read them outloud to the public who could not read. For this reason, he chose to create pamphlets rather than books as they were less pages, and much cheaper to circulate (Herman, 2016). However, Pepe’s rise to fame soon became evident when people started to distribute and circulate the images on common social media websites such as Facebook, Tumblr, and Instagram, as well as on controversial websites such as 4chan. It was here that the 4chan community turned a simple cartoon frog into an anti-sematic, Trump supporting meme that became a known hate symbol by the Anti Defamation League. 4chan is known for distributing hateful messages which is a great breeding ground for fans who are like-minded with Donald Trump (Mele, 2016). Furthermore, both of these situations are examples of virality as explained by Karine Nahon and Jess Helmsley in Going Viral. First both Pepe and Luther’s pamphlets of information were shared from one to another, second Pepe’s white nationalist, Donald Trump themed memes spread incredibly quickly as the election grew closer, and Luther’s pamphlets did travel quiet fast for the 1500’s. Lastly, for their medium they both reached an excessive amount of people at vast distances (Polity Press, 2013).

Both Luther and Pepe were so successful in the reception and consumption of pamphlets and the memes as their messages were successful with the people who read them. If someone can locate themselves within the message, then it will resonate within, and spread. This broad consumption across space resulted in an audience with more affect and solidarity (Herman, 2016). Both messages were successfully consumed because the audiences who spread the messages felt connected to the issues. Pepe started on a vertical broadcast network, being sent to many people all over the web, but then when he was associated with Trump he was only broadcast to people who would consume the hateful messages. Luther experienced the same issues, as his theses were consumed by a mass amount of people for the time, but as his messages spread they were only consumed by groups who had similar beliefs as him.

Works Cited: 

Helmsley, J and Nahon, K. (2013). Going Viral. Polity Press  

Herman, A. (2016, November 1). CS371. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University.

Herman, A. (2016, November 8). CS371. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University.

Frank, P. (2016, September 30). The Strange Internet Journey Of Pepe The 'Chilled-Out'. The Huffington Post

Mele, C. (2016, September 27). Pepe the Frog Meme Listed as a Hate Symbol. New York Times. 

Mohn, T. (2016, October 28). Long Before Twitter, Martin Luther Was a Media Pioneer. New York Times.