This is made me think about the Black Mirror Episode 'Fifteen Million Merits', where the protagonist struggles hard to get into a casting show out of hate. After he successfully got in and held an angry rant holding a glass shard against the host's throat his 'performance' turned out to be so popular that they made a weekly show out of it.
For anyone who hasn't seen it, damn is that episode a good ~hour of scifi. Black Mirror has some great stuff, if you don't mind a lot of it being _dark_ as hell.
These stories always make me think of contracts, and how truly crazy some of them really are* (valid "across the universe"?!) that people get sucked into and what they end up signing away for a chance at stardom or wealth by trading their freedom of being not-famous.
The creator doesn't want it to be used by the alt-right as a symbol of hate, which doesn't mean that's the only thing it represents. On some twitch communities it's a nice mascot, with variants like widepeepoHappy that fits the message of love and peace that the creator wants it to have.
The article says "a right-wing symbol", which is true.
That same sentence also says "is not considered a right-wing symbol in China", which agrees with you.
"It's a right-wing symbol" and "it's not universally a right-wing symbol" can be simultaneously true... but as with "the swastika is actually a symbol of peace!", being technically correct isn't a substitute for using good sense.
Because before being a meme it's someone's creation, and their creation is being used for nefarious purposes that they don't condone, art has always an artist behind, a human. A meme doesn't appear out of a vacuum.
They can be authoritative in their intents and try to seize back their creation, as fruitless as this will be (and the author very likely is aware of) I think that's pretty sensible of them rather than throwing your hands up in the air and let the chaos machine of internet meme culture take over everything it touches.
The creator's opinion is irrelevant. Pepe is just a shitposting symbol because that's what 99% of the population see it as. That's just the nature of what a meme is. It exists as an idea and is defined by how people think of it.
Most people don't call GIFs 'jiffs' just because the creator made-it-so?
I'll reply here as the other post seems to have been removed before I could submit. As a s.c. "progressive", I see plenty of pepe and his derivatives in all kinds of circles, from lgbtq to social liberals, marxists, anarchists and whatever else people cram under that umbrella. Really quite far from being a right-wing or even far-right symbol, even if many use him for that purpose aswell. Shitposting crosses party lines.
I don't understand why you're saying that - it's contrary to the nature of symbols and language. Symbols are a unit of meaning, so their usage dictates their meaning. If Pepe was used exclusively by the right, then it would be a right wing symbol. If it was used by various people, but was particularly popular with the right to express right wing ideologies as memes, even then it would still be a right wing symbol when used as such. Symbols very frequently have multiple meanings, sometimes where one is dominant.
Anyway, I'm not commenting on where I think reality lands, just on your comment.
This symbol is (probably) mostly used by certain small group of right wing people, but it is not used for self identification (unlike swastika by nazi).
So swastika is a nazi symbol, but pepe is not.
Or another example: Star of David is often used by ZOG conspiracy theorists, but it does not make Star of David ZOG symbol.
