Artist Matt Furie introduced Pepe the Frog as part of his Boy’s Club comic work online in 2005. In this early context, Pepe was a goofy, laid-back character with no political meaning attached. This starting point matters because later internet reuse would separate the image from its original story and author.
A printed edition of Boy’s Club #1 was published in early 2006, helping spread Pepe beyond a small online audience. Print publication also made key panels easier to scan and repost later. This was an important step in Pepe becoming “portable” content for internet sharing.
A Boy’s Club panel featuring Pepe saying “feels good man” became a simple, reusable reaction image. The appeal was that Pepe’s facial expression clearly communicated a mood, even to people who never read the comic. This is the point where Pepe begins shifting from “character” to “template.”
An edited version of Pepe labeled “feels bad man” spread online, showing how easily the image could be remixed to express different emotions. This helped establish Pepe as a flexible language for online feelings, not just a single joke. The pattern of remixing became central to Pepe’s later “meme ecosystem.”
By the early 2010s, Pepe was commonly used as a reaction image across major meme-sharing spaces. As more people encountered Pepe outside Boy’s Club, the character’s original backstory mattered less than the feeling the image conveyed. This widening recognition set the stage for both mainstream popularity and later misuse.
A culture of “Rare Pepes” developed around making, trading, and showcasing unusual Pepe variations. The key change was that Pepe images were treated as collectible social objects, rewarding creators who could produce new versions quickly. This made Pepe a high-volume remix platform that could be pushed in many directions.
By 2015, some online communities were producing Pepe images with extremist and racist themes, including Nazi and Ku Klux Klan references. This marked a turning point: Pepe was no longer only a general-purpose emotion meme, but also a contested symbol. Importantly, the same base image could now signal different meanings depending on context.
In October 2015, Donald Trump retweeted an image associated with the pro-Trump “You Can’t Stump the Trump (Volume 4)” video that used a Pepe-style depiction. This helped pull Pepe further into U.S. election-related online culture. It also showed how meme imagery could travel between fringe boards, social media, and national politics.
After Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” remark, Donald Trump Jr. shared an “Expendables” parody image labeled “The Deplorables” that included Pepe. This moment mattered because Pepe was presented alongside recognizable political figures, not just anonymous internet users. It reinforced the idea that Pepe had become part of election-era identity signaling online.
In September 2016, Hillary Clinton’s campaign site posted an explainer connecting Pepe’s circulation to white-supremacist and “alt-right” internet spaces. The post aimed to warn mainstream voters about symbols used in online political messaging. It also amplified public awareness that Pepe’s meaning had become politically disputed.
In late September 2016, the Anti-Defamation League added Pepe the Frog to its hate-symbol database, citing how some variants were being used in racist and antisemitic contexts. The ADL also emphasized that many Pepe uses were not hateful and that context matters. This designation became a widely referenced “official” marker of Pepe’s transformation into a contested symbol.
Soon after adding Pepe to its database, the ADL published commentary explaining how hate symbols can be created by reusing ordinary images. The argument was that meaning can shift through repeated extremist use, even if the original creator intended something else. By late 2016, Pepe’s story had become a common example in discussions about online radicalization and “meme warfare.”
Pepe the Frog: From Comic to Internet Symbol (2005–2016)