Do you know 「Pepe」?

Why I Like Pepe

Much like most of America I became enamored with Pepe around 2015, I’d seen it popping up on the internet in games and web-pages with user curated content. I sort of enjoyed the fact people were using this amusing looking frog to push back on point they did not agree with.

Pepe really started to morph once people started making their own and using it for anything and everything and that was always good for a chuckle and is when google image search started to get full of these “Rare Pepe’s”

It is the adorable image of this silly green frog that I have come to know and like, Pepe is the frog that is truly owned by the people so of course I have my very own Pepe t-shirt.

Go! Pepe Go!

Pepe was a college-aged anthropomorphic green frog with a human body who has poor habits. Now he is a character known the world over for his ability to be anything to anyone.

It may have been born in the United States, but there is a Pepe for every country in the world. There are few memes that are more popular today. It is one of the few memes that has even inspired goods to sell and caused politicians to us it to their political advantage.

Originating in the 2005 comic by Matt Furie called Boy’s Club. Since 2014, Pepe is such an interesting phenomenon that it has been studied by behavioral psychologist Jordan B. Peterson. Creating its own subculture where people create thir own Pepe’s and trade them like cards calling them “Rare Pepe’s”.

Why Pepe

It is because of the universality of Pepe that makes Pepe goods ideal for most customers. At the store I work at (Sasebo Gobangai) I noticed something interesting when we were selling Pepe t-shirts, stickers and stuffed animals.

Our American customers really liked the t-shirts while Japanese middle-school and high-school students liked the stickers. I think this is due to the expressive nature of the stickers. Americans were leaning towards the t-shirt as if they were trying to buy a piece of history.

Japanese students were selecting stickers as an extension of their personality. It is not dissimilar to can badges or key-holders.

Sometimes the customer picks something they find funny or interesting, others they buy to reflect their personality.

What is Pepe

It has been seventeen years since the world first met Pepe. Coming from a modest beginning then spreading from counter-culture into the mainstream.

People adapted a character from a webcomic and changed it to something completely different.

It’s become something unrecognizable, while controversial it still remains and is discussed to this day. Typically, memes have a shelf-life, a set amount of time before people get bored with them and move on to the next thing, but Pepe remains to this day.

Pepe is different because this anthropomorphic green frog can be anything to anyone.

Unlike most memes, Pepe was meant to reflect the feelings of the person posting it, meaning Pepe became many things to many people.

The beauty of Pepe is that Pepe can be anything at any time, reflect any emotion or feeling and often delves into more exaggerated themes as a way for people to express themselves.

Pepe is You!

It is because of the very fluid nature of Pepe that I believe that it makes a good product for any store, the stickers are not likely to stay in stock long, they fit in most phone cases and come in a wide variety.

The store I work at is never able to keep them in stock for very long.