{"id":31846,"date":"2022-10-07T09:25:52","date_gmt":"2022-10-07T16:25:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=31846"},"modified":"2022-10-07T10:46:03","modified_gmt":"2022-10-07T17:46:03","slug":"pepe-wojck-goebbels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=31846","title":{"rendered":"Pepe, Wojak, & Goebbels"},"content":{"rendered":"

This probably isn’t worth the time it takes to write about it, but even crudely-drawn graphics, the kind we see on Twitter, have been polarized.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"pepe<\/a><\/td>\n\"wojak\"<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

<\/center>We all know Pepe<\/a><\/strong>. While I’m sure you’ve seen the other one, I bet you didn’t know it had a name. I didn’t, until I looked it up this morning: Wojak<\/a><\/strong>. For all I know, every crudely-drawn graphic from Kilroy on has a name.<\/p>\n

But anyway. What I see on Twitter is that the Pepe graphic is almost exclusively used by white supremacists and MAGAts. Wojak, on the other hand, is almost exclusively used by those who skew normal; i.e., non-racists & Democrats. They’ve come to represent, at least to me, different sides of the culture war.<\/p>\n

I hate them equally. No matter the message or intent of the posters who use them, the drawings come across as hateful and hostile, the sort of thing you’d see on a racist flyer taped to a telephone pole in an ethnic neighborhood. They remind me of the cartoon Jewish caricatures Goebbels published in Der St\u00fcrmer<\/em> (you can look that shit up yourself, if you feel you must). They may not come from the same place (well, Pepe does, for sure), but they look<\/em> like they come from the same place.<\/p>\n

Look, I’m all for graphic memes. The photographic kind, that is, like the guy checking out a new chick<\/a><\/strong> while his girlfriend looks on disapprovingly, the Vince McMahon reaction sequence<\/a><\/strong>, or the Orange County Chopper argument<\/a><\/strong>. Those can be, and are, used by anyone, and are generally disassociated from politics, race, and hate.<\/p>\n

The cartoon ones? I’m okay with Swole Doge vs. Cheems<\/a><\/strong> and This is Fine<\/a><\/strong>. But I shudder every time I see Pepe or Wojak, no matter what the underlying message is, and wish people would quit using them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No matter the message or intent of the posters who use them, the drawings come across as hateful and hostile, the sort of thing you’d see on racist flyers taped to telephone poles and doors in low-income housing projects.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[250,27,2],"tags":[4025,3410],"class_list":["post-31846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-wars","category-memes","category-personal","tag-crudeisascrudedoes","tag-magats"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31846"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31854,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31846\/revisions\/31854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}