It’s internet lore that President Donald Trump was “ memed into office .” If that’s true, there’s only one meme responsible: Pepe the Frog.By the time President Trump tweeted his likeness in the form of cartoon amphibian in 2016, artist Matt Furie’s peaceful frog character had evolved and mutated in Internet communities from pacifist stoner to a symbol of hate.
Both the artist and the cartoon character are the subjects of Arthur Jones’s Feels Good Man , a comprehensive and disturbing tale of how the Internet operated in the 2010s.Pepe the Frog is possibly one of the more ubiquitous internet icons of the past decade and responsible for introducing innumerable people – for better or worse – to the field of political memes.
Trying to make sense of a meme is like explaining abstract art to some who doesn’t visit museums, but that doesn’t mean Arthur Jones’s Feels Good Man is inaccessible.In its hour and half run time, Feels Good Man draws in all the disparate elements that make a meme as ubiquitous, and culturally insidious, as Pepe the Frog.The elements illuminated in the film have been the subject of study for the last several years as the reach of the icon ranges from historical coincidences to the blockchain of “rare Pepes” that made their way into the cryptocurrency market.It’s an overwhelming story filled with terms (NEET, dank, Kek, meme magic , Alpha, Beta males) likely little known outside the web’s communities.
To explore the evolution of the cartoon character, Feels Good Man focuses on the trials of the seemingly ambivalent artist Matt Furie and his eventual exasperation as his favorite character becomes misused and weaponized by the far-right and later amplified by the conspiracist internet personality Alex Jones.Throughout the film, director Arthur Jones depicts Furie as a willfully powerless creator.At one point, Furie describes himself as a “spectator to how things evolved on the internet.” As a result, it’s easy to see Furie as naïve over the course of the film as he tends to believe that the distortion and dangerous use of Pepe will run its course, but Furie’s emotional attachment blurs his reactions to the travails of his character.
Feels Good Man asks if redemption is possible for both the art and the artist in our current moment.
Jones’s approach is holistic, and the film contains interviews from meme scholars, psychologists, occultists, forum posters, and Matt Furie’s friends and loved ones.Perhaps it’s the only way to tell a story as strange as the Pepe the Frog narrative and the artist that conceived him.
The film, released for digital download on September 4th and set to air on PBS in October , can be utilized as a retrospective of “how we got to now” or at the very least, a cautionary tale about art, internet communities, and digital linguistics.Pepe’s original transformation from pacifist frog to meme comes from Pepe’s iconic phrase “Feels Good Man” rather than the image.Like most digital memes, the derivatives of linguistic phrase amplified the image.
From Cartoon to Controversy In the mid-2010s, an era of commodification moved Pepe from the fringes to the mainstream.
Jones’s storytelling of this moment provides some of the most clarity in the film.4channers believed the Pepe belonged to them and when celebrities like Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj posted Pepes on their own, the threat of loss encouraged the iconic perversion.From there, meme creators repurposed Pepe as a symbol for Trump’s darker rhetoric, but it was finally codified as an alt-right meme when Hillary Clinton’s campaign provided an explainer of how the meme was misused.It gave validity to Pepe the Frog’s use as an icon of hate and racism .
Furie attempted to end the controversy by killing Pepe the Frog in 2018, but by that point, a large portion of 160 million analyzed memes have used Pepe as a disturbing image.
An interviewee named “Pizza” explains that “the Pepe we see on 4chan now has been so far removed from the original that the Pepe Matt was killing was his own.”
Feels Good Man is also an examination of the wider grift industry that permeated and formed many of the tactics of the far-right.In the climax of the film, Furie successfully sues Alex Jones to prevent further use of the Pepe image .While Arthur Jones somewhat downplays the success of the lawsuit as a small cash payout, Furie’s win against Alex Jones sets a precedent of memes and legal rights.While Pepe the Frog is still in the digital wild, Alex Jones is slowly receding into the background static of the conspiratorial web.
The epilogue of the film points to a possible redemption of Pepe the Frog as an icon of hope and resilience in Hong Kong and perhaps that’s true, but the story clearly isn’t over yet.Regardless, the film is a valuable document of a confusing time in history and in its short run time, provides an extraordinary story that needed to be told.
Feels Good Man is available for digital download on September 4th and will be aired on PBS on October 19th at 10pm.
Jamie Cohen
I am an expert in digital media, memes, visual culture and histories of virtual reality.
I hold a PhD in Cultural and Media Studies and I founded a New Media degree in
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I am an expert in digital media, memes, visual culture and histories of virtual reality.I hold a PhD in Cultural and Media Studies and I founded a New Media degree in higher education, wrote a book on the subject, and co-authored the first peer reviewed paper on Pepe the Frog.Additionally, I am an experienced television producer with a background in reality and non-fiction programming.My new and digital media research has been presented internationally and I am a fellow of the Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change as well as the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Lastly, I co-host and co-produce the Digital Void Salon Series , a livestream and podcast show that explores the gap in common understanding of digital culture, media, and technology..
