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'Feels Good Man' documentary traces how Pepe the Frog was hijacked by the alt right [nola.com]:

As Matt Furie conceived him, Pepe the Frog was mellow, harmless and likable. Pepe was one of the central figures of the comic “Boys Club,” in which a group of offbeat friends lived in perpetual slackerdom, eating pizza, playing video games and smoking weed. How the comic character came to be adopted by the alt-right and white supremacists is a crazy but real story. Director Arthur Jones’ “Feels Good Man” traces the bizarre way Pepe was elevated into a popular internet meme, and then a toxic one that connected general discontent with white grievance politics and support for Donald Trump.

Furie lived in San Francisco, where he worked in the toy department of a thrift store. “Boys Club” resembled many aspects of his life, especially his friends. He originally created Pepe the Frog in 2005 and introduced the image to the internet on MySpace. The deadpan comic and the character were simple and relatable, and characterizations of Pepe as a sad frog caught on. An image of Pepe urinating while standing up, with his pants at his ankles, was printed with the thought, “Feels good man.” That banal but slightly crass image and the phrase became popular on internet boards, especially the anonymous posting hub of 4chan, one of the most toxic spaces online.

The anonymous message boards attracted offbeat people and content. Shocking or weird posts and images could spread quickly among users who liked and pushed for ever more outrageous content. That could snowball into further exposure as the boards elevated popular content. But Pepe was embraced by all sorts of internet users.

Furie seemed not to understand that he lost control of Pepe. But the film’s dedicated mission is trying to trace how new conceptions of Pepe were created by masses of unidentified users who shaped the chaos of internet chatter into a malignant force.

Part of the answer seems to stem from disgruntled men becoming enraged at women posting on the boards and appropriating Pepe for themselves. These angry, misogynistic men started a crude posting battle against the “normies” in what they thought of as their space. The battle took another ugly turn as the enemy became mainstream culture in general. The boards filled with violent and nihilistic images such as Pepe flying a plane into New York’s World Trade Center towers. Pepe was depicted as a Nazi and a member of the terrorist group ISIS decapitating a prisoner.

Another major leap was made when Pepe was appropriated by the alt-right, as in images of Pepe being anti-immigrant. Some of the documentary’s most fascinating exploration is about how Pepe served as a sort of gateway to radicalization, bringing disparate couch and basement-dwelling online users to organized political ideas and action. It became concrete as a Hillary Clinton speech critiquing the right wing’s hostility to immigration was interrupted by a shout of “Pepe.” That energized the movement, and eventually Donald Trump and Donald Trump Jr. tweeted images including Pepe. The Anti-Defamation League has since labeled Pepe a hate symbol.

Furie struggled to reclaim Pepe. He filed copyright lawsuits against people including conspiracy theorist and right-wing radio host Alex Jones. (Footage from their respective depositions is entertaining). But Pepe’s image had been shared many millions of times, and Furie had no control over it. Pepe was later appropriated for other movements, and even a cryptocurrency.

As an unsuspecting character, Pepe became the perfect vehicle. But the story is about unconnected acts of digital vandalism metastasizing into a powerful and destructive force. Going viral is the appropriate way to describe the unchecked spread of harmful ideas.

“Feels Good Man” is available online through Zeitgeist Theatre & Lounge’s website, zeitgeistnola.org [zeitgeistnola.org].

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