D
Deleted member 18582
Poet laureate of the deep state
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I remember when I was younger and I first came across the Pepe Frog Meme and I found it really uncanny and unusual looking, even though he was meant to be a kind of cute/shy/awkward guy. And then I remember seeing it used for the first time in the context of xyz-phobic memes. For some reason, when I first saw that, it seemed to hit SO right. Like OF COURSE this frog would be associated with Nazism, hypermasculinity, misogyny etc. There is something profoundly bizarre and vile about the way he looks that, vibe-wise, reminds me of school shooters, and large men with deep, meaty, yet neurotic and nasally voices (like imagine Armie Hammer if he spoke very quickly and neuroticaly), who have utterly lost all empathy or feeling of community. He doesn't give off a vibe of chill, sad stoner to me, he seems closer to me to some kind of global elite that makes geopolitical decisions that result in thousands of deaths with a casual indifference.
It's not that he is ugly tout court that makes me feel this, that would be really surface level, he's a very particular kind of ugly. And it's not just the fact that he's become so closely associated with xyz-phobic memes, because I remember feeling this sentiment before I even knew he was associated with it. It has something to do with his eyes especially, he's like a amphibian humanoid but his eyes protrude from the top of his head and his eyelids are really droopy, a look that some people interpret as tired/sad but which instead reminds of that type of casual indifference / violence I just described, especially when combined with the amphibian appearance. and the uncannily big smile that shows his tongue sometimes... The variations don't help--sometimes you get him with a huge muscular body, sometimes you get these high-res realistic filter versions of him with really wet eyeballs and greasy wet reptile skin. It's so sensorily potent, that just looking at him causes you to feel some sense of taste and touch. It's hard to describe.
He makes me feel some kind of horror and primal dread mixed with a very subtle but alluring fascination that's reminiscent of watching gore videos. And for some people, that dread and fascination is further mixed with a little cuteness. It's such the weirdest combination of emotions.
Does anyone else feel this way? It seems like most people say he's just cute and none of this comes to mind. I mostly spoke in terms of metaphor in this post because of the difficulty of defining him straight up. If I had to wager a theory, here you go. Pepe's appearance seems almost perfectly crafted to elicit two uncanny valleys: an human appearance related one, since you can't tell if his appearance is more like a human or a non-human, and a intersubjective human emotion one, since you can't tell if what is going on in his mind is something that is devoid of empathy (and therefore does not see others as "human," so "uncanny" in this way) or empathic (and would therefore recognize himself as a human among other humans). But he does these uncanny valleys in such an exacting and perfect way I haven't seen before, so he's not just any other human-looking-with-vague-emotions-creature. it makes sense why he appeals to Nazi sensibilities, since Nazi aesthetics (think of H.P. Lovecraft) has always been about these dehumanizing but subtly alluring uncanny valley sentiments.
It's not that he is ugly tout court that makes me feel this, that would be really surface level, he's a very particular kind of ugly. And it's not just the fact that he's become so closely associated with xyz-phobic memes, because I remember feeling this sentiment before I even knew he was associated with it. It has something to do with his eyes especially, he's like a amphibian humanoid but his eyes protrude from the top of his head and his eyelids are really droopy, a look that some people interpret as tired/sad but which instead reminds of that type of casual indifference / violence I just described, especially when combined with the amphibian appearance. and the uncannily big smile that shows his tongue sometimes... The variations don't help--sometimes you get him with a huge muscular body, sometimes you get these high-res realistic filter versions of him with really wet eyeballs and greasy wet reptile skin. It's so sensorily potent, that just looking at him causes you to feel some sense of taste and touch. It's hard to describe.
He makes me feel some kind of horror and primal dread mixed with a very subtle but alluring fascination that's reminiscent of watching gore videos. And for some people, that dread and fascination is further mixed with a little cuteness. It's such the weirdest combination of emotions.
Does anyone else feel this way? It seems like most people say he's just cute and none of this comes to mind. I mostly spoke in terms of metaphor in this post because of the difficulty of defining him straight up. If I had to wager a theory, here you go. Pepe's appearance seems almost perfectly crafted to elicit two uncanny valleys: an human appearance related one, since you can't tell if his appearance is more like a human or a non-human, and a intersubjective human emotion one, since you can't tell if what is going on in his mind is something that is devoid of empathy (and therefore does not see others as "human," so "uncanny" in this way) or empathic (and would therefore recognize himself as a human among other humans). But he does these uncanny valleys in such an exacting and perfect way I haven't seen before, so he's not just any other human-looking-with-vague-emotions-creature. it makes sense why he appeals to Nazi sensibilities, since Nazi aesthetics (think of H.P. Lovecraft) has always been about these dehumanizing but subtly alluring uncanny valley sentiments.
