[TRAILER: "FEELS GOOD MAN" DOCUMENTARY]
>> "Boy's Club" is about four Fraggle-looking dudes
who smoke weed and play videogames and eat pizza.
>> I didn't even know what a "meme" was.
>> A meme is an idea that spreads from mind to mind through society.
>> My favorite meme has got to be Pepe the Frog.
>> When you put art out into the world, people can take it and interpret it any way they want.
>> The white supremacist movement has taken over the meme, Pepe the Frog.
>> I'm going to be recognized as the guy that made this shitty meme.
It's like my worst nightmare.
>> Memetics is a slightly weird world you get into.
>> It's, uh, Pepe's become kind of a symbol...
>> He's unique.
There's no other meme like this.
>> I'm going to chop your little froggy head off like this.
[Applause]
>> Hi. How is everybody doing tonight? [Applause and cheers]
>> My name's Matt Furie and I'm the creator
of Pepe the Frog.
He has gotten into some weird situations lately.
You know, I'm going to tell you a little bit about my story with dealing with that.
[Laughter] Pepe is a really personal character to me.
As I created him, he is one of four characters in a comic book called Boy's Club.
He's just like a stoned frog dude that likes to hang out, eat snacks, and fart with his
buddies.
[Laughter] I kind of relate to him.
In fact, I kind of feel like how this picture looks right now.
Kind of chill, but totally exposed.
[Laughter] Because I'm not used to doing, like, talking to lots of people.
I feel good about it.
So the thing about Pepe is, I was just talking to one of the Andys backstage and he said
Pepe was a meme within a meme.
He was a meme before there was another kind of meme.
These are a couple of examples of Pepe as just a random Internet meme.
Yeah, one of them, he is, I guess, sniffing panties, I don't know.
The other one is a goth chick.
I can relate to both of them on some level, I guess.
[Laughter] But I thought it was kind of a cool thing.
Like, oh, Pepe is a meme!
This happened for almost a decade before the whole controversy happened during the election
when, like, Donald Trump shared a Pepe meme where it was like Pepe as Trump and then all
the Nazi stuff and Hillary Clinton put out an explainer saying Pepe was a symbol of the
alt-right, which it kind of was.
It was very strange.
I was used to it being an internet thing but the whole political thing didn't make a lot
of sense to me.
Pepe got put onto this list of hate symbols, and you know, I understand why, but I tried
to combat this by doing something positive.
I reached out to all of these friends from the art community and was like, hey, let's
do a Save Pepe campaign and I got to reach out to all these creators and illustrators
to do positive Pepe memes, with him just chilling out, looking at butterflies, or hanging out
and smelling the flowers, saying "Peace, Man" and stuff.
Like, what else are you going to do?
That was one of the strategies I used.
I don't know how successful it was.
In fact, I don't really have a platform to share this stuff, except for this, so these
are a bunch.
My friends kind of created these here.
Before Trump got elected, I was asked by a website called The Nib if I could illustrate
something about my experience having a character appropriated by the alt-right, and used by
Trump and all this stuff.
So I did this kind of nightmare scenario of Pepe slowly morphing into Donald Trump, and
then into a monster, and then being trapped inside the monster's mouth, and then starting
a nuclear war.
So, you know, some pretty heavy stuff.
I think art is supposed to be therapeutic, on some level, that's why people do artwork
to work through this stuff.
I was feeling a little helpless and was just illustrating my anxieties at the time.
Then Trump got elected and I felt stuff got out of control, so I ended up killing Pepe,
and laying him to rest, just seeing if that would do something.
But I'm not sure, you know, I think death in general is a tough thing to think about,
and you know, killing a character...
It was my soul response to the controversy.
What can I do in this situation?
So this was one strategy that I used.
Another strategy that I used was to, you know, I started the Save Pepe campaign because I
wanted to save symbolic frogs, but I'm into environmental stuff and wanted to save actual
frogs too.
I started a t-shirt thing with Save the Frogs, which was a nonprofit organization that was
actually about saving frog habitats, and 100% of the proceeds from this Threadless t-shirt.
I just wanted to, like, take it out of the weird context it was in and try to save actual
frogs, because one of the reasons I used Pepe was because he was kind of like a neutral
character.
I feel like a lot of people could relate to because he was a frog, and having it be wrapped
up into this weird racist, Nazi agenda, it totally came out of left field.
I wanted to talk about frogs too.
I don't know.
So, you know, I'm from Ohio originally.
You know, I have got kind of a hard-working Ohio work ethic and I just do what I do and
try to do it daily and try to work really hard.
You know, things would come through my email and I would just do them.
I got approached by Mad Magazine to do a little frog in front of the swamp and The Nib wanted
me to do another Pepe comic, and this time, I did an explainer and didn't try to explain
anything.
[Laughter] Because I don't have any answers.
I'm just trying to deepen the mystery or transcend this stuff somehow, which is what I normally
do.
I'm not a political artist.
I'm kind of a kid and an escapist.
I'd rather draw pictures of dragons than talk about political stuff, but this is giving
me an opportunity to face what's going on through the appropriation of my own character
and engage more with weird political stuff.
I started a Kickstarter campaign with my brother, Jason, and we did a Pepe Now zine.
It was a successful campaign.
We made a zine, stickers, buttons, and stuff like that and our goal was to resurrect Pepe
the Frog, because I killed him, but he wanted to bring him back to life and instill some
more hope into the situation.
I didn't want to do political stuff so I made a weird activity book out of it.
There's like mazes and pictures you can color in, give him a slogan.
That's him as a tadpole and that is him old.
My reaction to life, in general, is kind of surrealist or absurd so I'm doing whatever
comes naturally to me.
The way he comes back alive is it turns out it was just a fever dream.
He was at a rave, raving with his friends, listening to techno music.
He was dehydrated, passed out and hallucinated he was dead, and his friends are like he is
alive.
Let's get you some water, Pepe.
That was my solution to him dying.
[Laughter] And you know, a lot of the other pages in the book, I was researching the happy
hardcore scene in the early '90s of rave culture and just like focusing on this hardcore happiness
because, like, you have to get hardcore happy in these times.
Man, you got to focus on the yin-yang frisbees and the smiley faces and just the positive
vibes, because otherwise you're trapped in your own mind, or trapped in these weird narratives
that are being projected into the world right now.
You have to just be like, I am happy, mother f-ers, you know?
[Laughter] I try to stay positive, I always try to maintain
a positive mental attitude but to be honest, the whole thing kind of got heavy and I got
kind of depressed.
I wasn't like creating as much as I would have liked to, couldn't get off my couch.
And somebody sent me this the day Trump was elected.
That was on the cover of the OC Weekly.
What the fuck?Trump Pepe on there.
I thought it was kind of funny, but also deeply disturbing, like what the hell is going on?
This stoned frog character I made is now like a shorthand for this weird new creepy movement
that's going on and this other picture is just like, you know, people sending me Save
Pepe stuff.
I've gotten trolled, you know?
I think this is actually kind of funny.
I don't take it personally even though I'm having my head decapitated, but it is what
it is, right?
You know, I'm just like, just dealing with all this stuff and kind of sad and being kind
of unproductive.
Finally my wife, Aiyana, she used the internet for a good way, instead of a bad way, that
I was used to the internet being.
And reached out to her friends on Facebook, and said Matt needs help.
He needs a lawyer or something to stop this kids' book from being made.
I was trying not to deal with it and be positive and stuff but, you know, in my heart, things
were getting heavy and especially with this because I've done a kids' book.
This whole frog on a bike is from a kids' book I did.
Anyway, this dude was making this Islamophobic kids' book with Pepe in it and I was able
to get a law firm to represent me pro bono to get him to stop that and we donated the
profits to the Council on American-Islamic Relations and that was a big win for me.
I was like, oh, cool.
[Applause] >> I can do something about this now because
I have this billion-dollar law firm behind me now and they are continuing to help me,
and it's rad.
They are working really hard in copyright law to aggressively pursue anyone using Pepe
as an identifier for the alt-right agenda and hitting them where it hurts in their wallet.
Every time, so far, we've been able to cease-and-desist and stop all these people from using Pepe
in ways that are not appropriate.
All the cheesy stuff is kind of true that people say.
I have realized you have to be the change you want to see in the world, and I always
look on the bright side, follow your bliss, you know?
But also like free legal counsel is like...
[Laughter] [Applause] That's it.
That is a very bright side to this situation.
So the interesting thing about my story is I've been able to kind of turn this Pepe thing
into like a positive thing, where it's kind of this trojan horse where it infiltrates
whatever weird alt-right agenda people are trying to use it, and if they're trying to
profit from it or use it to represent some website or something, we can go in and sue
them and get them to stop doing what they're doing.
It's actually turned out to be pretty sweet.
[Applause] I appreciate being able to come out here and talk to you guys about my story.
This wouldn't have happened if shit didn't hit the fan, you know?
So, like, it's been a positive experience for the most part and I'm going to continue
just, like, you know, trying to turn Pepe into a loving rave baby full of love and joy.
That's it.
[Applause]