PEPE’S POWER: INTERNET MEMES, CONSTITUTIVE RHETORIC, AND POLITICAL COMMUNITIES BY KORY A. RIEMENSPERGER A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of WAKE FOREST UNIVESITY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS Communication May 2018 Winston-Salem, North Carolina Approved By: Allan Louden, Ph.D., Advisor Ananda Mitra, Ph.D., Chair Laurie E. Gries, Ph.D. Ron Von Burg, Ph.D. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank: my mother – Kristin Kaye Jensen – and my father – Karl Andrew Riemensperger for conspiring together to introduce me to this world; my brothers and sisters for constituting a real family and keeping me honest; my grandparents who have convinced me that life should be enjoyed at all times and in all places; citalopram for allowing me to use what brain I have; Dr. Ron Von Burg for shepherding the communication graduate program during my time at Wake; Dr. Alessandra Von Burg for planting a seed about graduate school in my head during my first years at Wake; Dr. John Llewellyn for the same, and for showing me the difference between intelligence and wisdom; all the professors, adjuncts, teachers, substitutes, and educators who cared enough to show me that learning is a noble pursuit; Nathan Henry Bedsole for being a positive intellectual influence since my undergraduate days; Carleigh Morgan for sending me an email that greatly influenced the path of this research; Lori Kie for counseling me to write concisely; and Ali Dagger for being kind to me at my most stressed. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................... iv ABSTRACT .........................................................................................................................v CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION: INTERNET MEMES, CONSTITUITIVE RHETORIC, AND POLITICALCOMMUNITIES ............1 Ethos Statement .................................................................................................2 Defining the Internet Meme ...............................................................................3 Internet Memes as Constitutive Rhetoric ...........................................................7 Digital Communities, Constituted .....................................................................9 Political Campaigns and the Internet Meme ....................................................12 Literature Review.............................................................................................15 Methodology ....................................................................................................25 Chapter Preview ...............................................................................................28 II. CHAPTER ONE: THE ARTIFACT AND THE SOURCE(S): PEPE THE FROG AND 4CHAN .......................................................................................30 Distinction between Visuals, Images and Pictures ..........................................30 Memetic Logics ...............................................................................................32 The Origins of Pepe .........................................................................................41 4chan, the First Pepe Collective.......................................................................45 The Genres of Pepe ..........................................................................................49 The Transformation of Pepe ............................................................................52 The Radicalization of Pepe ..............................................................................54 The “Death” of Pepe ........................................................................................57 III. CHAPTER TWO: A COMMUNITY CONSTITUTED: REDDIT’S /R/THE_DONALD ..........................................................................................59 Revisiting Constitutive Rhetoric ......................................................................59 An Introduction to Reddit ................................................................................67 /r/The_Donald, the Second Pepe Collective ....................................................69 IV. CHAPTER THREE: THE CAMPAIGN: RECOMENDATIONS FOR POLITICAL COMMUNICATIONS IN A HYPERMEMETIC WORLD .....74 The Trump Cases .............................................................................................75 Recommendations to Political Campaigns ......................................................81 A Tentative Conclusion ...................................................................................83 FIGURES ...........................................................................................................................86 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................104 iv APPENDIX ......................................................................................................................131 CURRICULUM VITAE ..................................................................................................132 v LIST OF FIGURES Figures 1. A colorized version of “Feels Good Man,” an early Pepe the Frog ......................86 2. A "Smug Pepe" image from the early 2010s .........................................................86 3. A "Smug Pepe" image remixed with French candidate Marine Le Pen ................87 4. A "Smug Pepe" remix incorporating Donald Trump .............................................87 5. One of two retweets from Donald Trump’s Twitter account featuring a remixed Pepe image .............................................................................................................88 6. Portion of a /pol/ thread between three unique individuals ...................................88 7. A picture depicting Pepe embracing “AFD-Chan” ................................................89 8. A 4chan post reappropriating the image of Kim Il-sung .......................................89 9. A 4chan post reappropriating the image of Massimo D'Alema .............................90 10. The original photograph of Massimo D'Alema that inspired an internet meme ....90 11. “Pepe’s reaction” ...................................................................................................91 12. Untitled strip from Boy’s Club ..............................................................................92 13. Untitled strip from Boy’s Club ..............................................................................93 14. Untitled strip from Boy’s Club ..............................................................................94 15. Untitled strip from Boy’s Club ..............................................................................95 16. Untitled strip from Boy’s Club ..............................................................................96 17. The first true blog post on 4chan ...........................................................................97 18. A comparison of 4chan and 2chan’s thread features .............................................97 19. Scene from the introduction sequence of SEGA videogame Zero Wing ..............98 20. Original “9/11 Tourist Guy” picture ......................................................................98 21. An example of a typical 4chan “thread” ................................................................99 22. An early memetic remix of text from Furie’s original drawing .............................99 23. An example of an apolitical “Feels Good Man” post without an accompanying Pepe image ...........................................................................................................100 24. A created collage of “Feels Good Man” and Pokemon character transformations ..............................................................................................................................100 25. A collage of two pictures of Parkland survivor Emma González ........................101 26. The front-page of /r/The_Donald for most of the 2016 presidential campaign ...101 27. A memetic response to Matt Furie’s cease and desist order ................................102 28. A memetic response to Matt Furie’s cease and desist order ................................102 29. An image from “The Adventures of Pepe and Pede” ..........................................103 30. A Pepe image featuring a nuclear blast ................................................................103 Tables 1. Know Your Meme “pepe” query results ................................................................51 vi ABSTRACT Internet memes cannot be manufactured by any one individual. These artifacts are best defined as bodies of work that manufacture and distribute meaning online. Internet memes persuade politically-motivated individuals to join and stay together using common memetic logics. Using Limor Shifman’s definition of an internet meme, Ryan Milner’s framework of memetic logics, and Laurie Gries’ new materialist research strategies, this thesis will examine the memetic definition and rhetorical transformations of Pepe the Frog – an internet meme that has undergone radical symbolic growth since its inception in the late 2000s. These transformations successfully constituted ideologies in several digital political communities. In turn, these digital places generated images that were circulated by political actors