Sad Pepe: Bringing the Messages in Martin Luther's 95 Theses to the spread of Pepe the Frog's Unfortunate Electoral Debut

Martin Luther was a media pioneer and is considered to be the first social media influencer. Everything that we see now in terms of digital and social media can be linked back to his messages in his 95 Theses which went viral very fast. The way that his message in the print media ecology and assemblage reconstituted the moments and places of production, distribution, and consumption is what people are recognizing now in their daily rituals of using media. Luther was the first to exploit the media ecology of print which were all characterized by distinctive moments and places of production of the message, the moment of circulation and distribution of the message, and the moment of consumption and reception. Luther’s messages became viral through circulation when people started to spread the information that was in his pamphlet. The demand was so high that it increased the production of the pamphlet.  The content of Luther’s viral practice was religious in that it went against the Catholic Church to spread the message and gain Protestant followers. It was meant to take a community, a mode of communication, and a mode of affect to create a new community of Protestants based on a particular theology. His pamphlet was more a mode of propaganda and agitation as opposed to entertainment and information. Luther’s 95 Theses was predominantly about religion and ecology but it ended up being relevant to everyday life – structure of warfare, politics, our daily rituals, etc. that went on for a century (Standage, 2013). Luther’s 95 Theses created the idea that literacy produced power. If it can be written, circulated, communicated, produced and distributed then the messages that are being conveyed will be heard. This is what we are seeing most commonly on social media now through memes.

Pepe the Frog is a character from the comic series Boy’s Club by Matt Furie. There are many variations of Pepe including: sad frog, smug frog, and angry Pepe. Most recently, Pepe the Frog has been symbolized by the alt-right movement as a “Nazi Trump Supporter” (Williams, 2016). The official Hillary Clinton presidential campaign blog published a post that labelled Pepe the Frog as “sinister” and a “symbol associated with white supremacy.” Creator of Pepe, Matt Furie, came out with a statement reinforcing his character’s light-hearted and chilled-out nature who celebrates peace, togetherness and fun. Though this statement has been released to the public, Pepe the Frog will now be seen as a white ethno-nationalist symbol because when something is posted on the Internet it is there forever.

Donald Trump has set new records in many fields during this election – none of them are particularly positive. No other candidate in modern U.S. election history has had such an openly antagonistic relationship with the news media and a high level of disregard for certain groups of people and conventions (Williams, 2016). Donald Trump endorsed Pepe by retweeting a Trump version of the character which led to the creation and distribution of pro-Trump memes. No meme has ever been denounced by a presidential candidate. Pepe serves as an unfortunate symbol to all that Trump stands for. Memes are created to send messages directly to people, much like Luther’s pamphlet did. Pepe has been related to racism, Nazism, and offensive language since being tied to Trump’s campaign and that will not go away anytime soon. 

Work Cited:

Standage, T. (2013). Writing on the wall: Social media -- the first 2,000 years. New York: Bloomsbury.

Williams, A. (2016). How Pepe the Frog and Nasty Woman Are Shaping the Election. The New York Times.