I know what you mean, like Twitch emoji Pepe's.

I think because of the time that has passed, there's a demographic that uses him without knowing and I think the stickers definitely are part of that. However I don't think that removes culpability, it's just how different generations interact with different words, or in this case meme.

And really I think what it comes down to is when meme becomes tied to identity. Sad Pepe is relatable, feel a connection to the character, see what other memes he can do, before you know it your discord emoji Pepe is a pipeline to normalizing political extremism.

Like how some subcultures create a pipeline to fascism, like cottagecore and tradlife. It's not necessarily that all Pepe, all tradlife, brings you into the path towards fascist ideology, but that many of those with fascist ideology are drawn towards Pepe and tradlife, which then make engaging with content surrounding those subjects suspicious.

Pepe in abundance is just something to be wary of. I don't think it's wrong to use him on discord or twitch chat, but I am more suspicious of people who identify with him heavily and I keep an eye out for the type of memes and rhetoric that they use. Chances are high that it's innocuous, but given his history I'd say it's better to be aware than to think nothing of it.

Last thing, for me it's mostly just odd because when I look up Pepe memes, so many of them are terrible. Not just bad memes I mean, like hateful and awful. Sad Pepe is pretty much the exception here, as in normal meme I still see him and it's used pretty in-line with what you would expect from normal memes.

Tl;Dr - sad Pepe or Pepe emojis on twitch/discord = probably okay. Identifying with Pepe or making Pepe memes = maybe I'll be keeping a closer eye on what exactly you're trying to say

It's funny that Futurama had an episode about this recently.

Fox Entertainment "News" should never be allowed to air political content.

Whereas IMO Valve should make it very clear that swastikas will be reviewed, and any Nazi swastikas will result in an immediate ban, whereas use in the legitimate meanings will not be (and that they will take context into consideration, i.e. user location, other profile info, past handles, discussion comments, etc etc).

The only thing I worry about this is then the de-legitimization of the cultural ones. All this would do would get fascists to start putting their profiles from the country's where it's deemed acceptable. I have no numbers for this but I feel like the number of people who have a cultural swastika are vastly, vastly outnumbered by the number of people who use it as a symbol of hate.

I have mine set up in groups, per hard drive.

Documents is set up for projects. Downloads gets grouped every few months and turned into a backup downloads folder on the backup hard drive.

So it goes from C:/Downloads into H:/Backups/Downloads/Downloads-11-19-2024

Every other hard drive is mostly just games, so it's set up by project and the Games with whichever launcher.

I don't have many projects that go more than 6 folders deep, most would be 4 at most

Pepe was a neutral meme. He is not anymore.

https://beehaw.org/comment/4105872

The sad reality is that he is a politicized figuredhead for fascism. You can try and use him, but you need to be aware of how others use him, and it will end up reflecting more poorly on you than it will help reclaiming him.

I suggest looking the links on my comment linked, but at the very least on your own look up, "Pepe meme Putin", and "was Pepe at January 6th". People are using him to storm the capitol and dressing him up in an iron cross to assassinate political figures. That's not just casual memes :(

I say this as someone who grew up with his era of memes (my first memes were icanhazcheezeburger which was the precursor to RageFu). I remember his good days too man.

But Pepe got Alex Jonesed. He got assaulted by the MAGA cult and they put him on a cross like Jesus and now he's dying for their sins. I don't think we can save him.

I feel like you had to be there. Frankly, the pepe symbol was co-opted so whether you like it or not, you should be cognizant of its history and how people choose to use it.

Every point the other user is making - the iron cross, the swastika, the SS, people know even if they weren't there because of how apparent the symbols were and why they were used.

Then there are dog whistles when it became wrong to hold hateful beliefs and people started using combinations of the numbers 1488 or two H's simultaneously. Pepe was co-opted and used as 4chans alt right mascot and spread out beyond it, into internet campaigns for fascism (not just pro-Trump). That's the thing about co-opting symbols, fascism doesn't care what they stand for, if they like it, it's very difficult to keep it safe. A prime example of this is the fictional, known cop-killer Frank Castle, The Punisher, being co-opted by cops and white supremacists. His logo should instill fear into the fascists heart, instead his logo has been the conservatives wet dream since the 1980's, and was seen in 2017 during Charlottesville.

Pepe's usage dying down because people were getting sued doesn't mean that it suddenly stopped being used by shitty people, it just means it's swept under the rug with all their other dog whistles. Post 2016 Pepe was abducted and reused just like every other hate symbol. Fascists are never creative enough to make something of their own so almost every single symbol that's currently tied to the ideology has been stolen.

I would say that you are right that post 2016 Sad Pepe isn't 100% alt-right, but to be honest these style of memes do not last very long. Each generation of meme lasts about 3 to 5 years and they only really last in that generation of people who enjoyed them. That is to say, kids on the Internet now don't know Pepe's history. Would they use him? Maybe, except definitely not because they don't use memes like that, Gen Z and Gen A do not use TopText BottomText memes, character memes, old RageFu memes.

Memes of today have variations of GigaChad and the anti-NPC (they don't know I'm ____, or crying behind the mask) which are developed RageFu characters. Pretty much only Sad Pepe exists in this sphere and isn't entirely co-opted, but even then, Sad Pepe is also commonly used on boomer Facebook for posts when men hate their wives.

I agree that it sucks to lose something to fascism. Pepe didn't deserve it. But like all memes, his history ran its course and he won't be used in many new ways anymore. The people who are still using him are using him for specific reasons beyond just nostalgic meme. But who knows, memes cycle. Maybe he will be brought back with a new vigor for anti-Nazi memes created by leftists. Until then though, all you need to do is just look up various events and "Pepe" and you'll see a whole new side of Pepe that maybe you hadn't realized. Pepe and Elon, Pepe and Trump, Pepe and Putin... Okay I went to Google that last one myself out of curiosity and literally an Iron Cross Pepe sniping Hillary Clinton. I WISH I WAS MAKING THIS UP.

I suggest, "was Pepe meme at Charlottesville 2017" and going to images. Another good choice would be "was Pepe meme at January 6th".

Pepe was not present in 2017, but it shows you the type of memes he's used in. Pepe however, was present in D.C. on January 6th. Sorry for the BuzzFeed article but it had the image.

You can defend Pepe all you like, I know that in his heart he is not a hate symbol. But Pepe is being used as one, so you need to be critical of when you see him and why. It might be completely innocent, but you must know that the chances of that are low. At least now hopefully you aware of his history and why others are skeptical and critical of his usage. Other meme characters don't get dressed up to play political hitman. Other meme characters aren't as heavily used by conservatives

Sadly it's like that for pretty much any game.

On the bright side, a lot of them are bots just trying to influence real people. Unfortunately, it is people who made these bots who probably do have that hatred. And of course, not all of them are bots...

Remember to check the discussion board posts themselves (each comment), if there is a mouse icon, it means they own/play the game. If there is no mouse icon, they do not.

With this in mind, you'll notice the bot propaganda posts 90% of the time have not played nor own the game. At least on Steam, they may have pirated the game to play it, then decided to post on discussion boards about how empathy and recognizing of othe- sorry, "wokeness" is killing gaming.

It's so stupid how hatred stifles discussion. Ironically hating the things just makes them focus on it more.

Earth's atmosphere can only keep out some of coldness of space

The bag is stolen by the main villain while you are in the pocket dimension, and he eats it.

Game over. Lol

It was far less bad than people make it out to be. I was on a stream watching and so many comments were talking about how he looked, and I'm sitting here thinking... y'all realize he's listening to Trump speak right? Anyone actually listening to what that monster has to say is going to either look befuddled or dismayed. He looked both. He definitely had some weak spots, but compared to Trump who wouldn't even answer a question and blatantly lying every other second.

It sucks. People were basically cheering him on online, the most against him comments I saw were "they're both so old". Not commenting on the insanity or the racism or the lies, just memeing on old Biden. Which yeah he deserves it but the rhetoric is reminding me of 2016 and it does not inspire hope.

I just want to say I hate disposable vapes with a passion, they are so terrible for the environment because people inevitably litter them, leaving the plastic and batteries to leech into the environment, let alone the nicotine remnants.

If you use nicotine, please switch to a refillable vaporizer.