Duncan Trussell Family Hour - Matt Furie

Episode Date: July 15, 2017

Matt Furie, the creator of Pepe The Frog, joins the DTFH to talk about what happens when your meme gets away from you.

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Hey friends, did you know that your brain is a hive of memes? It's true. Your brain is a habitat for all kinds of little bits of living information that have climbed into your ear holes and your eye holes that have been carefully manufactured by meme-mancers, wizards of memes who have crafted certain memes, phrases,

turns of speech, and images so that they become highly infectious and take up some small neural space inside the meme hive that is your brain. At that point, you become a carrier of memes, and you might not even realize it, but you begin to spit these memes out of your mouth during conversations and infect other brains with the meme.

Do you guys remember the Where's the Beef meme from 1984? Why is the beef? Some hamburger places give you a lot less beef on a lot of bum. Where's the beef? At Wendy's, we serve a hamburger we modestly call the single. And Wendy's single has more beef than the Whopper or Big Mac. At Wendy's, you get more beef and less bum.

Hey, where's the beef? Ugh, that meme created a fucking meme pandemic. That meme spread like the black plague through the playgrounds of America. You couldn't walk six feet without some bully punching you in the arm and grunting, hey, where's the beef? Where's the beef?

I bet you don't have a dick. I don't know if you remember that, but fuck, it was everywhere. And it crept out of the playgrounds of the world and it made its way into the Democratic National Convention of 1984. Let's listen to Walter Mondale sneeze out a meme. Well, when I hear your new ideas, I'm reminded of that ad.

Where's the beef? Yeah. He just wants to know where the beef is. Walter Mondale wants to know where the beef is. He's one of us. He said, where's the beef? And you could be certain when Walter Mondale said, where's the beef?

A Wendy's ad executive came so hard, his jizz exploded out of his ceremonial underwear through his Masonic apron and burned a hole into the pentagram he was worshiping in front of. Richard Dawkins coined the term meme, sounds like gene, and it's supposed to be something similar to a living thing. It goes through the process of natural selection. You can actually watch a meme pandemic spread,

like amazeballs. Remember the amazeballs pandemic from last year? I think it was last year, maybe two years ago, when the term amazeballs suddenly ripped through the internet and made its way in all the shitty fucking hacky sitcoms. It was the kind of thing hip tech savvy dudes might say to express some amazement over a brand new video game that they were quite impressed with.

That game's amazeballs, man. It was like savvy and edgy. Now it's just an indication that somebody's an asshole. The meme has died. But at one point it was a great way, not only to express some sentiment, but also to express your allegiance with a specific demographic

that you feel represents you the best. Memes are powerful. They're a way that you can identify yourself with a certain group, like the safety pin. Remember that? That one came hobbling out of somebody's meme workshop, like a two-headed baby lamb that villagers stood around and stared at

as it gasped its last few breaths and collapsed into the soil. Remember that? It barely had a life at all. But for a second, people were wearing safety pins, which brings us to Pepe the Frog. Pepe the Frog is an anthropomorphic frog that no doubt you have seen.

Donald Trump tweeted it. It's in a lot of people's Twitter profiles. And Pepe the Frog has become the mascot of the much-maligned alt-right. Pepe the Frog has become synonymous with white supremacy, intolerance, homophobia, and even Nazism. There's Pepe the Frogs out there

that actually have Hitler mustaches now. And what makes this particular meme fascinating is that its creator, Matt Fury, never intended it to be a political symbol. Pepe the Frog started off on Myspace. It started off in a comic book called Boy's Life. Pepe the Frog was just supposed to be a slacker post-college anthropomorphic frog.

That's it. But for some strange reason, Pepe the Frog became the main symbol of the alt-right. And also the nexus point of some amazing conspiracy theories. One of them being that Pepe the Frog is actually the manifestation of an Egyptian death god named Keck.

We're gonna talk about all this stuff with the creator of one of the most notorious memes coursing through the inner webs today, Pepe the Frog. Matt Fury is here with us today, friends. We're gonna jump right into it. But first, some quick business. This episode of the DTFH is brought to you by hellofresh.com.

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All right friends, without further ado, let us dive into this episode of the DTFH. Today's guest is an artist. You know him from his comic book, Boys Life. He's also the creator of Pepe the Frog. And he is here with us today to reclaim the sweet spirit of his mutated meme. Check out the Pepe Kickstarter, Save Pepe.

Matt's making a new comic book designed to resurrect and purify Pepe the Frog. You can chip in by going to that Kickstarter. Links will be at DuncanTrussell.com. Now everybody, please spread your meme wings wide and spray as many astral memes as you can all over the glowing face of the beautiful artist, father of Pepe, son of Keck,

and meme lord himself, Matt Fury. I think we have kind of similar voices. Yeah, we do. You have a more beautiful voice. Mine's too raspy. You've got a really nice voice. Mine's a little on the raspy side. I don't know.

I was told in elementary school that my laugh sounded like a wounded turkey and I never got over that. Oh, kids are vicious. That's incredible that you survived that. I was thinking maybe we could just start off by you sort of telling folks about Boys Club. Yeah, well, I mean, the interesting note

about Boys Club is that, you know, it's basically four anthropomorphic creatures. So they're kind of like 20-something muppets almost. So there's a land wolf. He's like the party dog. And then there's Andy, the kind of sarcastic dog guy. Then there's Brett. He's kind of like the more fashionable,

dancy kind of guy. He's like the female of the group. And then there's Pepe. And he was kind of like the just kind of the everyman chilled out frog guy. He was like the little brother of the group kind of. And so it's just kind of a bunch of kind of lazy gags about just kind of post-college dudes hanging out

and kind of living together and, you know, exchanging weird bodily fluids and farting and partying and doing drugs and stuff like that. So it's just kind of gag humor, kind of loosely based around my own circle friends living in San Francisco after I graduated from college. That's when you started Boys Club is after you graduated? Yeah.

How did you come, did you come up with these characters one day or were you just doodling? What, how did it pop into your mind to throw them together? Well, you know, I just had an idea to do a comic strip. And, you know, I was really inspired by a lot of artists. You know, Robert Crumb, of course, and Jim Woodring, who I think you had on your show. I did, yeah.

And he does some amazing frogs and frog lips and stuff. So, so honestly, he's a big kind of influence on me, kind of stylistically. I also really love how his comics, a lot of them are more abstract and, you know, wordless in most cases with those Frank comics and stuff. And, and I was really into the paper rad at the time. This guy, Ben Jones, who did these comics,

like these kind of just really funny, pretty simple kind of stripped down approach to doing comics. So, so it's just kind of a mix of different things. I come from more of like a fine art background, but this was more of my attempt at entertainment. It's, and it's real, that's crazy. I had no idea you were influenced by Woodring.

And I guess when I look at Pepe, I, and I look at those characters, I could see a little Frank in there, I guess. I guess there's a little of that in there, huh? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I mean, I was, I was big into Woodring in that period. And, you know, I've naturally just really like drawing frogs and critters and creatures and things was fur and scales

and things like that. So I kind of have this whole other side of me creatively where I'm doing more detailed kind of colored pencil drawings, but the boys club was just kind of really more simple, just black and white line drawings. How, what year was this? I started it probably in like 2005. And, you know, originally I was just doing it on zines

and stuff, posting them on my MySpace profile and doing that kind of thing. Yeah, that's, see, this is like, this is deep internet stuff, man. Like you were posting, you were posting comics on MySpace, which at the time was kind of cutting edge. Yeah, yeah, it was cool. Like, yeah, during those days, I mean, I love,

I kind of miss the interface of MySpace. It was really a lot more personalized. You know, people could pick their own backgrounds, you could have music playing. And then, you know, it would be more like a yearbook or something, people would like sign on and be like, hey, I have a great summer or something, you know? It was just kind of a rad thing that, you know,

I feel like Facebook, I got off Facebook and a lot of other stuff, just cause it just seems kind of creepy. Facebook, yeah, I barely go on Facebook, man. It totally spooks me out. In MySpace, you know, all those old pages, I think about it sometimes, like what happened to my MySpace page?

And one thing that, you know, that really gives me the creeps is when I think about the inevitable dead world of Warcraft accounts, like when people die in the future, like the graveyards of characters that are just gone forever. I mean, it's a different thing to talk about,

but MySpace is just gone now and it was everything for a little while. And people are getting some success from MySpace. That's where, you know, the comedian, Dane Cook, got like, I don't know, a shit ton of MySpace friends. And that contributed to, at the time, what was this like brand new phenomena, which was a comedian filling up rooms from the internet.

It was crazy at the time. Now it's normal, but were you, did you start getting some like internet fame right away when you were putting Boys Club up on MySpace? I don't know. If I did, I was unaware of it. You know, I think what happened in the case of Pepe was, you know, people probably grabbed it

from MySpace page and then just like, took a few of the, for some reason that, you know, they took specifically this one little gag where the frog, you know, he reacts to, he pulls his pants all the way to go pee and then one of the roommates walks in on him and then later he's like playing video games with Lane Wolf and Lane Wolf's like,

so I heard you pull your pants down all the way to go pee and then Pepe's like feels good. Feels good, man. And then that kind of became like the early kind of meme. Right. Was that one of, I mean, do you know the history of memes? Was that one of the first memes? I mean, I'd like to say it was,

but I don't really study memes too closely, but the internet meme was kind of early on. I mean, I think it was like 2010 or something when that stuff was happening. Yeah, you are the creator of, you know, who knows, even if it's not the first, if it's the first of a thousand, that's still insane. That this thing popped out of your mind onto my space.

And someone saw it and was like, oh yeah, that sums it up. That sums it up, feels good, man. And they sent it to somebody and that's the early days, the early evolutionary phase of Pepe. That's the proto-hominated Pepe. And then when did it get picked up by 4chan? I don't know, I think it was like, it was kind of like in the earlier,

maybe a slightly more innocent time with 4chan. I don't really know too much about 4chan. I don't really go on there and stuff, but, you know, it was before, I'd like to think it was before 4chan, like went totally Nazi or whatever, you know? It was just like, I don't know, it's just like a place for anonymous people to really get together and start chat threads

and share weird pictures and stuff. I'm assuming that's what was going on. But weirdly also that the feels good man thing was like, people would send me emails showing that it was like on their weightlifting sites or like people do, like I just crunched my abs, feels good man. They'd use it on their fitness sites and stuff. Well, that's the way to explain their exercise.

When this was happening, what was, what were you thinking? Like, I mean, how did you process the fact that your art had taken on a kind of viral quality? You know, I was fine with it. It was all kind of new stuff and, you know, obviously it was kind of out, you know, that they kind of grew into being beyond me. Like took on all these other personas,

like there was a smug Pepe and then like, and then a sad version of him also caught on. And that kind of became an even more popular one was just him in the comic book. It's him like sadly eating a pizza bagel or something like that. It was like kind of a goof on the, you can have pizza on a bagel anytime kind of thing. And he was really sadly eating a pizza bagel.

And it was the only time in the comics that he's ever sad. Oh, shit, man. So he's not a sad character. He was just sad for this one moment and then that caught on or resonated for some reason online. So I don't know, it's all kind of a mystery, but it's interesting, you know.

What you, you were mentioning earlier that you, your background is fine arts. So that's, you were in college for that. Yeah, yeah, I'm from Ohio originally. I went to like a small liberal arts college in Ohio and studied painting and sculpture and photography and figure drawing stuff like that. Did, when you were in college,

did you ever study the occult at all or look into magic at all? You know, I've always kind of had a twinkle, you know, but I haven't really, I haven't really studied that stuff much. What do you mean a twinkle? I don't know. I mean, there's a special place for kind of the mystic elements

in the world that are kind of getting lost on technology now, but I think there's magic all around us, you know? And I think that, you know, I believe in like energies that we don't understand and things like that, but you know, I don't really study it. Have you ever had any kind of mystical experiences? Do you, you know, I guess the better question would be, where do you think art comes from?

Well, I mean, I think it's just, I don't know, I think I listened to a lot of Terrence McKenna talks and stuff like that. And he's a really a great way of articulating just like really kind of far out concepts and really being able to explain them really beautifully. And he, he has a good attitude about creativity and saying it's basically like, in some ways, it's just a reflection of the, you know, where does just creativity in general come from? Like it's kind of a universal thing.

And it's also something that separates us from all the other creators, you know, making music or writing and art and stuff like that. So, I don't know, I do think it's, it's kind of, it's like, it's about the only thing you can do just to keep, keep from, you know, just the doom and monotony of life, you know? It's just to be, to try to focus on positive creative stuff, you know? And that, that doom and monotony that you're talking about, when, do you think that creating transforms the doom and monotony or, or, or, or drowns it out?

Well, I think it's just a way, I think it just opens up new channels for people and, and, you know, it gives people a way to, yeah, kind of connect and reflect and try to, you know, process the world and stuff. You know, talking about doom and monotony, like, for example, like, there's all kinds of beautiful hundred, 200, 300,000 year old forests around and it's like, there's a lot of talk about creating jobs right now in America and stuff like that. So it's like, yeah, sure, we can like cut down this forest. It'll be great for the economy, for that generation, but there's no thought about,

you know, the future generations and stuff like that. So, you know, I trip about that, that kind of stuff. And I kind of have more of an ecological bend in my, in my own artwork. I like to draw like little characters that kind of, for me, kind of represent different aspects of the natural world or different. I like to try to draw characters to kind of represent these kind of weird ideas I have about, you know, reality. Well, this, I'm just, I'm curious, because if it feels like this thing that you created

has some kind of power to it, and maybe you didn't quite expect, like you imbued a thing accidentally, something came out of you that was this seemingly innocuous character. But then when I read your comics, when I've been looking at your comics, and I have seen the most popular ones, the crying, the Pepe with the pizza bagel, all of them, all of them, there is more there. It's not just a comic. Like you've put something in there that's really quite poignant and kind of heavy. It feels like more than a comic to me, just like Woodring feels more than a comic.

I mean, not to say any comic doesn't feel special, but there is, does feel to seem to be a little bit of an extra potency inside of these things. Am I just projecting that because Pepe has become such a notorious figure? Or do you think that when that maybe you're putting something pretty deep inside of this stuff? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I'm definitely too close to it to really make that judgment. But I think that like, you know, there's a conscious effort on my part to not make boys club about like kind of the more negative stuff about what's going on and to just focus

on just like really kind of momentary situations that you have when, you know, you just graduate college or something. You live in a bigger city and you have a bunch of roommates and you're all just kind of like goofing off and, you know, throwing up and indulging a lot and different substances and stuff like that. So, you know, I was just trying to, you know, make gag comics really. So I don't know why this thing caught on like it did online. But it's just the nature of the internet.

Sometimes she like this just happens. Let's become overly meticulous in the analysis of this because seriously, I don't think Pepe has even come close to Pepe's final form. And so to get a chance to talk with the creator of this thing is really important. And let's, let me ask you a really annoying question. Well, do you remember the first time you drew Pepe? Well, I've been kind of just drawing different versions of the frog like forever. You know, I've always drawn little frog dudes, even when I was a kid, stuff like that.

So I think it's just like, you can't really pin, right? I can't really pinpoint to an exact date or something like that. It's just kind of a, you know, I don't know where the missing link is in there. So you, as a kid, you were drawing little frog guys. But at some point you named the frog guy Pepe. Do you remember when that was? Yeah, that was just, you know, when I was just coming up with character names, you know, the four names have meaning for me, like a land wolf.

You know, he's kind of like the party dude. He wears shades and, you know, he's kind of like the, he was kind of the star of the show as far as I was concerned. But he got kind of overcast by Pepe. But I don't know. Do you remember the year that you named that frog Pepe? Probably 2005. Yeah.

But I thought, I thought Pepe just thought that was a funny name because it looked like pee pee. See, this is the thing, man. You don't, you don't, you realize what you've done. You're seeing it. But when I consider like, how often do you get a chance to talk to the guy who used to draw little elephants and name them Ganesh? Or how, you know what I mean? Like how often do you get to talk to the guy who drew little, little blue, little blue

coward boys? And it's like, yeah, it's Krishna. He likes to have, he likes to have fun in the forest and like, and any, uh, he's got, he's got friends and he can do magic stuff and people back then were like, whoa, that's cool. Krishna. Wow. That's really cool. And then as time progressed, you know, we know what happened, right?

And what's curious about the internet or technology is it's allowing us to sort of witness this, the formation of a thing that's still, I mean, I'm not saying it's literally a religious symbol. And yet it has taken on such extraordinary potency and it's such a funny thing. So it's because it's functioning on every single level from your POV. We have this benevolent, sweet depiction of a kind of naive time that happens before the world's jaws sink into you. And then from another perspective, people equate it with Nazism, white supremacy,

you know, and then it's been used in so many different ways that it's probably going to infinitely grow. Like you're, you know what you're like, you're like the guy who made the killer be, you know about that? No. What is that? The Africanized bee, how that happened. Like those things were, those things were created.

They were created like somebody intentionally made them. I can't remember why. Maybe they thought they'd make more honey or something. And, but then, you know, some of the bees got out and, and, and they started breeding. And now we've got, I don't know if you remember, do you remember the time when everyone was afraid of killer bees? I don't remember that, but I can imagine it. Yeah.

It sounds terrifying. It was, it was like, there were movies about killer bees. It was like the, it was one of the, you know, there's a million versions of Y2K. And killer bees, it was like, you know, as a kid, there was a couple of things you were worried about in the woods, quicksand and killer bees, man. Like never saw them, but like the idea was that soon these swarms of killer bees were going to descend on the neighborhoods of America and, and just kill all of us. We're all, we wouldn't be able to go outside.

There's going to be killer bees. One, the idea is you fucking like step on one killer bee and you're going to get a million killer bees attacking you. So you've, you, now there are these killer pepe's floating out there. Right. Yeah. And, and, and I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how the, how the people who have taken Pepe as a symbol of Donald Trump or as a symbol of the alt right or as a symbol of

white supremacy. How, how do these people deal with the fact that you, the creator of this character or seemingly have opposite political leanings? Yeah. I don't know. There's, there's just this, this kind of a few people have articulated it pretty well. One guy, some, some guy like was explaining Pepe as having kind of this grand tapestry where, you know, it's, you could just kind of view them on many different levels.

And there's another guy who said that Pepe was kind of like a mirror. So, you know, so Pepe isn't, I hate symbol Pepe is whatever. You want him to be. And I think like, yeah, when he was like weirdly politicized, like, you know, the president of the United States used like kind of us, like tweeted a spug Pepe thing. And that's, that's what, that's what really kind of supercharged that like, like if the president wouldn't have, you know, if Trump, but this was before he was president, wouldn't have done that. I don't think I would be talking to you or I wouldn't be having, you know,

having to deal with all of this super negative stuff. It's all, it's all because of, you know, he tweeted that. And then Hillary issued a explainer saying that, you know, it was Pepe was much more sinister than it seems. And was actually a nod to the alt right or whatever. And I think like tragically, all it's really done is, is like made the alt right than the killer be that, you know, everybody thinks that this alt right thing is kind of taken over. But really, I don't think it's as big as, you know, the media or whoever else makes

it out to be, you know, and the thing that kind of like grounds me is like, like we're saying that the perspective of like children, like kids, elementary school kids and middle schoolers and stuff, they're still into Pepe and think it's cool. And they don't really pay attention to the news and stuff like that, but it still has this kind of like that frog has some resonates with the little kids for some reason. And they're like, thank you. It's just a cool frog, dude. Yeah.

Well, you know, I mean, I think the problem with all the labels, the alt right and all of it is that it's created this ridiculous black and white universe, which and, you know, like with anything, usually the, you know, a lot of these people, they grabbed, they depict the alt right as it's called as just being one, one set of ideas, you know. And I don't know how much of the, I think one of the hilarious things about the alt right is that there's some percentage of it that is just trolling. It's intentional chaos magic. There's no, you know, I don't know how many of these people really have a focused political

idea as much as how many of them are experimenting with a kind of chaos magic. And Pepe being tweeted by the president is the ultimate victory of some troll or a cobble of trolls. I don't even know if trolls the right word for it, but you know, the one thing I've been thinking a lot about lately is influence. You know, the different, the way that we have this reality tunnel that we're all inside of and we all have to kind of share. There's a shared reality tunnel and how we've got a bunch of different operatives who are

desperately trying to paint the walls of this reality tunnel that we're in. We've got Russian operatives trying to create just absolute confusion by amplifying the appearance of disagreement between people in the United States. We've got our government trying to smear the news by making the news seem like it's putting out bullshit information. Then we've got the news putting out bullshit information because it wants to make money. And so it's this vortex of chaos where symbols are being shoved in front of us and we're being told, this is the truth.

And then those symbols fade away and new symbols come. And when you add into that, that a lot of the things creating these symbols or pushing the symbols to the forefront are literally artificial intelligence bots or bots that it's an AI. We are actually dealing with a few different what you could call covens, groups of sorcerers who are attempting to manipulate reality. We've got the government, the mainstream media. We've got artists. And then we've got like 4chan.

Then we've got the internet, the chaos lords in the internet who are just sticking their fingers into society to see what they could do. You follow me on this, Matt? No, yeah. No, I'm right there with you. You know, like, yeah, reality is really just sculpted by your own thoughts. So, you know, and there is kind of a group thought or like, you know, a consciousness or whatever that is, that is a, it's more of a hive mind of popular culture and the internet

and technology and all that stuff. So there, you know, I do believe you can manipulate and kind of pull the strings there. And, you know, that's kind of what politicians and news media and shows and whatever that's what everybody's trying to do is, you know, try to assert their version of reality or their narrative as they want to play it out. But yeah, it's not, yeah, like you said, it's not really as black and white as that. It's that you can see it on many, many different levels. So my approach to this whole Pepe thing is just to, you know, focus on the positive aspects of

it and to use the kind of notoriety that he's attained and, you know, try to transform it back into something that's extremely opposite of what, how it's seen by at least probably older people that watch the news and stuff like that. But like I said, like kids and stuff, they still, they still think Pepe's, you know, and it's totally outside of how I made him in my comics and stuff like that. It means just his froggy face means something to people and that's something I don't quite understand. But well, let's talk about that a little bit because, I mean, to not mention the Keck mythology

here, we've got to talk about it. We've got to talk about the, the idea that, that you may be the sort of like the Virgin Mary, that you, you're the Virgin Mary man. Think about it. You gave like, you were chosen by an Egyptian God of chaos and death to be the messenger through which he emerged into this dimension. But yeah, the interesting part about this and about kind of memes in general is you don't, you don't, you can't usually trace a meme back to its source.

I mean, there's a cue out there. There's like that. One of the early ones that I liked was that you ever seen techno viking? Oh yeah. You know that guy? Yeah, the guy though that kind of like. Viking looking dude. Yeah, who just like.

And then that, yeah, that thing went bonkers and he didn't want anything to do with it. Right. Yeah, but it's such a funny meme. It's so funny. Like that, that footage of him, like, you know, grabbing water from a guy and dancing, he just has such a kind of powerful assertive kind of raver dance. And there's just such power to this guy's just his movement and everything. And I think that really resonated with people and it's funny and some level, but it's also

kind of badass on another level. And it's just, it's strange. And I don't know. It's, I don't know. I think in a lot of ways, all these memes that kind of catch on, they just kind of, like you said, have some way to grab people's attention. And, you know, it's all kind of nonsense anyways. It's all kind of distractions.

And, you know, it's not, it's not reality, but it's something. Well, I mean, is it, is it, is it not reality? It's, it's a, it's, it certainly has become a, you know, I think about Pepe sometimes. Like I've looked at Pepe, I've tweeted Pepe to people. I've really, because I've enjoyed the kind of like, to me, what's really funny about tweeting a Pepe is that if you tweet a Pepe people, like the super leftist people will be like, you're on the alt right. And then like, and then people get upset over art.

And now you're upsetting people with art and it's hilarious because, you know, because, yeah, yeah. And to me, there's something really beautiful about that because it's like, you really are going to like, because I've decided to tweet this frog creature, you're then going to demonize me because it's like, you know, you'll know a witch when you see their cat or whatever. You know what I mean? I was going to say, my buddy Chris, who was just in here, he,

he worked at a pizza shop in Los Angeles, two Boots pizza. And he's got a prominent, you know, one, this was like, literally like months before the whole kind of controversy kind of boiled up with the, with the Trump thing and everything. He just, we were at a buddy's house and he got a Pepe, a feels good man Pepe tattooed, like right under his shoulder on his forearm, right under his, you know, his short shirt sleeve. So it's, so it's just right there on his arm. And, and this kid who was performing at the Echo that night, he was probably 22 or some was like buying some pizza and he's like, Oh wait, actually I'm good.

I don't want to buy from a place that will hire Nazis or, you know, so like, and this dude is like a, he's like a tall, long hair hippie looking guy. And he just right off the bat assumed he was a Nazi. And it was, it was, it was sad, man. And cause it was, this was, you know, just a young rocker kid who was like right off the bat thinking the dude was, you know, had some kind of like weird agenda with this, you know. Yeah. And it's like, that is evil to judge people based on that. You know, man, I remember I was at this comedy show and after the show,

I got in this conversation with the guys getting kind of political. And then I realized the guy's wearing a Pepe hat. And I'm like, Oh shit, you're in the, you're in the, you're in the, all right. And like, and then he's like, yeah, I guess you could say that. And then I realized, well, by then it was too late. We'd already had this fantastic conversation. I was making points. He was listening to the points.

You know what I mean? There was no sense of like stubbornness or violence or anything weird. And we kind of ended the conversation and I was like, Oh, okay, I got it. So it's like, I guess in a weird way, the alt right is another version of Y2K, right? It's like a thing people have kind of constructed. I'm not saying they don't exist. Obviously they do, but the vileness of it is probably more a representation of some, some of not the entire group, right?

It's got, they can't all be vile or horrific beings where I've met some of them. They're not terrible. I think it's a little bit embarrassing the way that people in the alt right feel inclined to constantly try to protect the president of the United States. I mean, I, you know what I mean? There's a kind of nerdiness to that kind of level of nationalism. You know, that's, to me, it just strikes me more as a kind of like, like nerd, like who the fuck support you, American presidents are 90% of the time murderous.

Yeah. You know, like, like all of them are murderous. They just inevitably, it's like, they're the captain of a ship that is sailing through an ocean composed of babies. That's a weird way to say it. They just, you know what I mean? They're going to run over some babies. They're like, they're going to accidentally, if you become an American president,

you're going to accidentally blow up some people like that's guaranteed. Yeah. Well, that's interesting. Like, you know, a few points on that, like, well, for one, you were actually talking, you were in physical reality talking to this so-called alt right dude. And I think that that kind of, in any case, will neutralize the situation when you're actually in a room with somebody actually physically talking with them. I think the kind of power that the kind of troll culture or whatever, a lot of it's derived by

the anonymous nature of the internet itself. You know, so, so you can kind of, you can go into these darker kind of versions of yourself and comfortably post weird stuff on the internet and then you don't have to necessarily own up to them right to somebody's face or something. So, so I think, yeah, a lot of that is neutralized when you're actually just trying to talk one on one with somebody and you realize that, you know, there's more to it than this kind of black and white thing. But, and also talking about presidents, you know, I thought I was like really not into George W.

Bush, but now he seems kind of cool. He's like, he's painting portraits of, you know, dudes that were maimed in wars that he created and stuff. And he's kind of, he's dealing with that creative way. And it seems like he's also kind of like popping pills and going to funerals and stuff and having a good old time. So, so I think that's kind of a weird twist on it. Like I never thought I would, I would relate to somebody like that ever.

But, but it turns out like, yeah, he's just trying to be an artist now. And I think that's kind of cool. That's compassionate. I can't, I don't have that level of compassion for him yet. You know, it's like Jeffrey Dahmer probably painted pictures of the people he decapitated with their own shit and blood. That's true. You know, it's like there's something really sinister.

It's like, oh, you're going to start some shitty fucking wars. And then you're going to paint the people who were maimed in these shitty wars. That's like though, you know, because it's like, you know how like they say, like if you're into S and M, like if you really want to make money in S and M, become a police officer, because you can like tie people up all day. You like, you're going to handcuff people. You're going to dominate people and you're going to get paid for it. Now that's not to say all police are into S and M, but in the same way, man,

there's no perfect job for a serial killer than to become an American president, because you're going to get to kill, man. You can kill and kill an American president or probably most presidents, certainly Russian presidents, you could, you could kill someone in the White House. Like you could have, I bet there have been more than a few presidents who've had a little accident. You know what I mean? Whoops. Oh, I squeezed too hard. Darrell, can you have Darrell? There's probably a guy who like just, that's his only job at the White House is from time to time to dispose of like

prostitute corpses that the presidents have strangled. But so they're murderous beings quite often. And then people get really upset when you say that, but it's like, it's verifiable. They're, they kill people. Obama joked about it. Obama has killed innocent people with drones and makes fucking jokes about it. George W. Bush paints maimed soldiers that were like exploded in a fucking, in his wars. You know, they, these people are murderous. So that's why I think any kind of fixation on the office of president at this point is

is weird to me. It's fucking weird. And also while simultaneously it's weird to me when people are like, oh my God, I cannot believe the president's tweeting like that. It's like, what? So what is it? It's like, okay, they can be murderous beings, but they need to have sophisticated tweets. You know, like Trump's already blown, you know, Trump already called, he's killed people. He already ordered attacks are allowed anyway. So the point is, man, all presidents are fucked up.

And I think the one cloying thing about the alt right is it's deep fixation on this president is somehow being different from the others or somehow playing a different game. When it appears it's the exact same game, maybe not. I don't know, but that's my take on them. Just relax on the fucking fetishizing the fucking president. Yeah. So I mean, presidents themselves, I mean, they're entangled in their own, you know, their need for power and their need for celebrity and their need to get their name, you know, just stuck on the timeline of American history forever and ever.

And, you know, I think that the root of that on some level is suffering. You know, I think that I don't think it's a good life. I don't, you know, you saw Obama, like he like got a full head of gray hair after being in office and stuff. So I don't think he like, you know, I don't. It's what happens when you kill a bunch of people. Yeah. I mean, I think it's stressful. Man, I would never want to do something. Well, you can't sleep as well.

Because it's like when, you know, like I've, there's some shitty things I've done in my life, you know, that I'm not proud of. Like I wish I'd been there for my mom or when she was dying. And like that affects me, that little bit of stuff. But like, I don't know what the fuck I would do if every time I went to sleep, I had to imagine the intestines of toddlers splattered on some desert because some drone strike that I allowed to happen went awry. Like how do you sleep after that? How do you make sense of it all?

Like how does it like process in your brain? Like, oh yeah, I guess that was the right thing to do. That wasn't the right fucking thing to do for what? You ask any, you ask anyone, what are we even doing in Afghan? What are we doing over there? Everyone's like, I don't know. Or this is just what we do. That's what we do.

I was walking down the sidewalk today, man. I was thinking to myself, how if you were to say something publicly along the lines of, you know, I think it'd be great if the United States didn't kill people anymore overseas. You would seem like an asshole. Like people would be like, what are you talking about? The United States, the existence of the United States depends on murdering people. You know? Like that's how deeply indoctrinated we've become in the state version of reality,

which is that war is an inevitable part of just being in the United States. You know? Yeah. I mean, you could just look through the timeline of just history in general. And it's just, it's bloody and it's bloody as hell, you know? So it just keeps going, man. I don't know. It's just part of life.

You know, people just, people kill each other like crazy. And, you know, but there's select groups of people that decide not to kill people and think that there's, you know, better ways to live. And it goes, it comes back to creativity in a way where like you, you know, everybody needs to be doing something. Some people need to be out there dominating and killing and stuff. And some people need to be out there creating and, you know, seeking love and peace. And, you know, so, you know, I try to, you know, you got to just try to focus on that stuff and try

to, try to sculpt. You know, you got to curate your own reality, you know, and like be aware of all this stuff. But, but for as many, you know, toddlers brains are splattered everywhere. There's like a butterfly lands on the blank. Brains, you know, thinks it's, thinks it's like a bed of flowers. And George Bush paints it. And then there's some beauty in that too. All this, all this kind of terror and brutality is kind of makes the beautiful things more

beautiful, you know? God, have you seen George Bush's incredible series of butterflies landing on exploded toddler brains? It's just beautiful. I mean, because you got to think, you know, like in the same way that that butterfly was once a caterpillar in a cocoon, that toddler brain was just trapped inside a boring old toddler head. And now look at the colors, the blood, the viscera.

It's like the, the, the, I have to at this point in my life reject the idea that we, that this murderous bullshit has to keep happening. I think what's going down is there's just a few assholes out there in positions of power who are intentionally creating confusion so that we don't realize that all of us, all of us are a lot like Pepe hanging out with friends, innocent, naive. Nobody really wants to hurt anybody else. Everyone's okay. Most of us are like that.

When I walk down the street and I look around at people, I don't see too many evil people. It's a rarity for someone to be a real fucking monster. And I think that this, this struggle to control the reality tunnel is you cannot underestimate just what you're saying, the power of art and creating and throwing on the walls of this reality tunnel is many depictions of the potential beauty of humanity as a species. How incredible we are and how powerful we are as a group, as like, as, as, as, as a group of people connected not by our fixation on the state, but by on our fixation of wanting to like give love to each other and to make art together and to create stuff together.

You know, and your Pepe is an, I think an incredible example of just the power of, of art. You know how it can just escape, how it can escape into the world and spread out and stretch out. And, and I think there's something about it that's so incredibly beautiful. And, and what's your plan with Pepe, man? What are you, what are you going to do? Like how do you, you say take back Pepe, but how, how is that ever going to be possible? Well, you know, I just, I just believe that every moment, every new moment, this moment right now, every moment is a new opportunity to scope

reality as you, as you see it and then to try to share that with other people and try to, you know, share your point of view with other people and make it like kind of, kind of a shared thing. So, you know, I'm, I'm doing various things right now. You know, I got, I mentioned, I did, I just started a Kickstarter campaign with my brother and he's been helping me out kind of on the technical side, but he's also going to help me on the creative side that come up with a new, you know, we're just going really direct and really simple with it and just trying to come up with a new comic to show, you know, a new version of Pepe and how, how that would play out. So, you know, it's just like I said, you just continuing

to use this notoriety of the frog and the power of it and everything and to try to, you know, to whoever wants to listen, try to paint a new, paint a new picture and that's all you can really do. You got to do, you know, it's like what Michael Jackson said, if you want to change the world, you got to look in the mirror. You just got to do it yourself and be, try to set the example for other people to make their own artwork and have their share their own ideas and, and to, to, in the hopes of inspiring creativity, you know. If you want to look in the world, you've got to look in the Pepe, right? Because he's a spiritual mirror of all of us. See, see, see how he's looking back. And this, do you know the story,

if you come up with this, the story of this new comic yet? Well, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm kind of in the writer's workshop right now and the think tank mode. So, you know, I've got a million different ideas. So I got to hone in on them. But, you know, I think it'll be kind of just back to, back to basics. It's just going to be gag comics, you know, but with a, with a more positive twist. Are you going to, are you going to in any way acknowledge the, are you going to in any way acknowledge the, what, the, what happened, the, the alt-right, the adoption of the character by the alt-right? Is that going to come into it at all? Well, you know, I mean, I think that's definitely part of the story. But, you know,

my aim here is to just kind of transcend all this nonsense and try to kind of, you know, to try in my own comic book kind of way to touch on, you know, to try to touch on some truths as I see them. So, you know, it's all very abstract right now. I just want to try to get, get kind of more psychedelic with it and do a lot of, you know, I had an idea about like, you know, Pepe trying to teach his friends how to try to get out of their brain and live in their feet. And, you know, the beautiful thing about comics is you can actually kind of simply describe these kind of weird ideas in a, in a simple drawing kind of way where, where you can, you can illustrate their feet and little versions of themselves living in their feet. And that could be something, I don't know, just weird

shit like that. That sounds incredible. That's actually one of the great ways to get into the moment is just to feel their feet in your shoes. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, you know, I've been kind of reading, you know, my own kind of philosophical or spiritual journeys, mostly just reading based at this moment. So I think I read that from, you know, one of these, one of these spiritual authors or something. It's a female, I forget her name, but she's, she's affiliated with like Rom Doss and that crew. And I know you, you are connected with those guys. I'm a big fan of that kind, that way of thinking and trying to be in the moment. Come to, come to December, you should come to the December retreat. I know. Are you going to be there? I'm going to be there.

Why don't you come? I know. I want to, man. Just do it. It'll be, it's great. You got to come. It'll be great. Oh, let's bring Pepe to Hawaii. I know. I got a button. Well, yeah, you have a little bit more time. I've got, I tweeted that we're going to be talking and some people have got some pretty good questions for you. Can I ask some questions from Twitter? Dude, I got nothing but time. Okay, beautiful. Let's just go through these though, man, because there's a lot of good ones. The first question is from John Daly, really funny comic. He says, are you bummed, bro? I'm not. I'm not bummed. No, I'm pretty happy. I just live day to day, kind of like Bob Ross or something. How can you have a bad day if you're just sitting around

listening to music and drawing pictures? It's nice. When I'm not doing that, I like to go on hikes and walk around and immerse myself in kind of just stuff that I think that people are kind of losing touch with in this kind of technological, computer-y, cell phone kind of all these distractions that we have nowadays and to just try to appreciate geology or the beautiful spectrum of all the different kinds of butterflies and insects and the way that just nature has its own memes that kind of catch on and flourish. A lot of that's lost now because people are just more interested in watching TV or going on the internet or going on Facebook or going on their phone and checking their feed and all this stuff. I really do think it takes away

from just looking up and trying to see the big dipper or something. Yeah. We've lost some kind of something really special, but there's something cool about the low population density out there. There is something nice about the fact that so many people are glued to their screens that it leaves a lot of this outdoor space pretty empty. That's kind of nice. Yeah, the outdoor space is empty. We have natural history museums with just all kinds of beautiful collections and archives of all this stuff. They're empty and nobody's in there. Nobody cares. Some people do. I do think that, I definitely think psychedelic drugs are a way to just quickly hit the reset button on whatever programming you've had throughout

your life and to try to get in tune with whatever new messages are out there that you know, whatever the earth is trying to tell you because it's talking. It's trying to communicate with us. It's trying to say like, hey, we're still here, man. We're still here. I don't know. No, I know. Listen, man. You're preaching the choir. I've got this garden. You know what I did yesterday? I don't care anymore. I've been doing enough Ram Dass retreats. I don't care. You know what I did? I played flute for my tomato plant yesterday. That's great. And I swear to God. I swear to God, if you tune into nature, it responds to you. It knows you're playing. I don't know how. It doesn't have ears. It doesn't have a nervous system. I don't care what Neil deGrasse

Tyson would have to say about whether or not my tomato plant could hear. Actually, he seems pretty cool. So he might think it's, I don't know what he'd think. You might think, you know, who knows? But I'll tell you this, man. I can feel it. When I water the plants, I feel them thanking me. I can feel this like we have a real relationship with the planet that people ignore. So no, you're preaching to the choir, brother. I know. Do you, it sounds like you take ayahuasca sometimes. No, I've never done that. I've, I've, I've read a lot about it. And I, you know, I probably saw that this, the spirit molecule document. Like I said, a lot of this, these kind of ideas and stuff, you know, I get through listening to music and, and kind of researching

it and reading it and stuff like that. And, and, you know, it's been a long time since I've actually indulged, but, but it's almost like you only have to do this thing like once or twice. And then you kind of get the picture and you can kind of take it with you the rest of your life. You know, you don't have to get trapped in some kind of, you know, pattern of, of continuing to do it. But, but it's good to check in every once in a while and see what's happening. It sure is. I love checking in. Do you, now I've got a question here in the same line of conversation we're having. Joe Kelly wants to know, do you prefer LSD or mushrooms? That's an important question. Well, I think mushrooms by far, just because it's,

you know, it's, it's, it's organic. It's natural. It just grows on cow shit or wherever else people are growing it. And, and, you know, it's all just chemicals, you know, I think I'm on the same kind of page with Terence McKenna in terms of like drug culture and it being like, you can't lump in like LSD and mushrooms and this kind of stuff with like methamphetamines and, you know, whatever other kind of chemical derivatives, but, but also, you know, drugs aren't inherently bad, like, like everybody thinks that they are. It's just, it's just the patterns of behavior that people get into and that become bad. But, but I think there's ways to, to use them in a responsible way that will actually enlighten you to these kind of different levels of thinking and different

really giving you a key to, to these new connections with, with nature, but also nature is like, it's a perfect place either. It's just as brutal and fucked up as war too on some level too. And I think, you know, you wouldn't spend a long time being a predator. And I think that's kind of sculpted the way that we, we kind of are scared of a lot of things because we've, we've been scared of things for millions of years. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I mean, that's kind of the tragedy of human beings is that we've got one foot in the bloody apocalyptic Old Testament river of revenge and death and eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, violent sort of survival related epigenetic echo ev, habituations. And then our other foot has the potential to step

into a utopian river, a river of, you know, harvesting energy in ways that don't destroy the planet and figuring out systems of that, that where people aren't exploited for dough and, you know, where, where we can like share a little bit more, but somehow not force that sharing, you know, like ways that we can give and give and give. And so that's what says that about humans. You look at a great white shark and it's like, that thing's just, that's what it does. It's a, it's a fucking, it's just a, it's a goddamn hole filled with knives that swims, you know, it just swims through the ocean, eats. It's not evil. It's not, you know, it's, it's what it does. They seem kind of sweet. I feel bad when people kill them, but that's what they do. They eat.

There's, there's never going to be a moment when a great white shark swims next to a boat and like coughs up the cure for cancer or some kind of beautiful book of poetry or, or, you know what I mean? Or, or some incredible work of art, but that's to me, the glory and the tragedy of humanity is it's this meeting a human being is these two places meeting. And that's what drives, I think people who take psychedelics crazy is from that through the psychedelic lens. You realize that we don't have to be channels of destruction. We can be channels of love and connection. And, and, and you want, and if we were all a little more filled with hope and a little more aware of that, then this planet, man, this planet could be, wow, this planet could be something

even more special. You know, we just, this could, this planet can really, really get a lot of Twitter followers if it. Yeah. Yeah. Like you can look at a place like, you know, I think an interesting metaphor for that, that kind of situation is like Three Mile Island. You know, it was a place that, you know, there's that big nuclear meltdown or whatever, and it was a big disaster or whatever. And now it's just people aren't allowed in there anymore and, and nature is somehow thriving there. I mean, maybe they have an extra eyeball or something, but they're still, it's almost like it's through that destruction, it's become an oasis. So, so, sometimes I'll just be walking around, going on a walk or something and be thinking about how,

like, we're just destroying everything. But then, like, there's always a patch of weeds that has the potential to grow into a new forest. You just got to, you got to just think about things on more of a geological timescale rather than a human timescale. And then you realize everything's all good. It doesn't matter. I mean, we're just a blip, or, you know, we're just a second on the, on the clock of, you know, the history of even the earth. And I think that's something that psychedelics kind of help you to understand too. It gives you a much wider lens to kind of transcend and view all this phenomenon that's happening around us and kind of, and then as humans, yeah, we can kind of, we can, we can go more towards, you know, love and, and understanding and

interconnectedness and things like that. And it's just, it's really up to every one of us. And, and it, and it does go back to creativity. And that's a way to kind of hopefully inspire people through art and literature and music and dance and whatever else to, to be in the moment and to be creative and to, to, to strive for excellence. And to understand that others are out there. I think that's a really important piece of the puzzle that people have forgotten is that there are, there are people like, here you are, the creator of Pepe the Frog, this being that is like, becomes synonymous with evil. And here we see that you are this beautiful, peaceful person who, who is connected to nature. And, and, and the, I think there's much more of you out there

than people think. And that is one of the theories I have is that there is a concerted effort by some group of people to try to make sure that there is a general sense of hopelessness in the world, in the sense that people just think, yeah, this is what it's going to be like. This is how it is. It's going to be like this. I mean, maybe it'll just become a little more authoritarian. Maybe it'll become, maybe there'll be another world war. Maybe there'll be another, you know, a disaster, some kind of, or whatever the fucking sad story is, but pretty much this is it. This is what it's going to be. And this couldn't be further from the truth. This country is brand new. This is a relatively a brand new country. We just had a fucking revolution.

And we, and, and, and it's only been a few generations since that revolution. And look at what's happened, you know, and, and so this is an important thing for people to realize is that from a grand universal scale, yeah, this is all of humanity, the flickering of a Nat's eye. But in this moment where we're all gathered together here, there is so much potential for connecting, for finding where we all agree. And I think that there are people out there desperately trying to keep us from doing that by creating the illusion that we're fighting more than we are. That's yeah, these fucking bots, you know, they're there, they represent both sides, you know, like on the

internet, the bots that are popping up in threads, what people are calling Russian bots, maybe they are, maybe they're not, they probably are. They're, they fight on both sides. Because it's like they can't shut the internet down, right? They can't shut it down. To shut down the internet is to probably invite a revolution. Like if they try to shut down the internet, there's going to be big trouble, big fucking trouble. So, so how do you deal with it? How do you deal with like in the old days, you know, you say some shit to the media, the media publishes it in a newspaper and that's what people think is real. Now we don't do that anymore. The state needs a propaganda outlet to control the people and the internet is fucking that up in the most

severe way. So what do you do, man? You get in the threads, you pollute the threads with bots and the bots have these fights in the middle of these threads and the fights distract and they ultimately keep us from finding what we used to be able to find in a nice argument, which is like a common connective point. You know, that's what it used to be. We get in an argument, not so I could win, we get in an argument so I could be like, oh shit, I guess you are right. Wow, I didn't see it that way, but fuck yeah, I see that now. And that's the potential of the internet is, is all these people on what's called the right and all these people on the left get some time, spend some time together constructively. I mean, maybe I'm just a naive son of a bitch, but I have a feeling that we're

more connected than we are broken apart by our ideas. And so that's what that's the creepy thing, is they're trying to fuzz us out with the background noise of bickering bots, right? It's like, imagine like that's what's what like it's like the noise of bots fighting is drowning out the sound of human beings coming together. Robots are fucking us up man. Yeah, yeah, it's robots and it's advertising and it's television and it's the internet, it's all this stuff in it, you know, it's kind of like it's keeping everybody kind of just looped into, you know, they've got their feed bag and they got their, their switch to hit and you know, we're all just fucking rats in a cage despite all our rage, you know, and you know, I think there is power in kind of, you know, the

internet kind of started off in this, you know, by like, you know, was invented kind of by people with more of an idealistic perspective that, you know, nobody would have thought in the early days of the internet that this thing that was really going to bring people together in unprecedented ways would go to these really, you know, you know, anonymously dark places or these weird robotic algorithmic places where we're getting, you know, I can't go online and look for a pair of sneakers and then check my email without seeing that pair of sneakers come up on an ad right next to my email. It's like really weird that that happens, you know, so we're all kind of just, you know, and there's all this that talk about like the echo chamber, you know, that kind of came into

fruition during this last election, you know, where people that are, you know, lean more towards the right and have friends like that, you know, they have their version of their news feed and then people on the left had their version of the news feed and, you know, there isn't a common kind of, there is no common delegation anymore, everybody just gets spoon fed whatever the hell they want and it's curated to their own tastes, so nobody gets another perspective to, you know, we don't get the rights perspective and they don't get our perspective in a way that would be creative or productive. We all just think this is how things should be and they're not this way and blah, blah, blah, blah, and you know, I think there's a missed opportunity there to like try to find some common

ground. Like you said, we could create a lot of great jobs by, you know, utilizing new forms of energy and technology and stuff that will actually bring jobs to the United States and help the planet and stuff like that, but a lot of it just has to do with the people that are in control of the resources trying to hold on, to grasp this control desperately and to keep us driving, keep us paying $100 a month to be force fed advertising right into our faces in our own homes, you know, and we're paying for this shit. That's right. Well, I mean, we, you know, the, this is to add to the weirdness of it all, like for example, like if people are listening to this on their speakers, right, I could say like, Alexa, order butt plugs and you know, in people's

houses, their Alexa will like try to order butt plugs, like they'll have to tell, they'll have to tell the Alexa. No, Alexa, order 1000 rolls of toilet paper. Yeah. You know, it does that. Or you could say like, Alexa, turn off everything. Alexa, let's, let's, let's watch some porno. Doesn't do that. You have to say like, you'd have to, you'd have to say like, Alexa, what's like a really annoying song? Wait, what is Alexa? I don't know what you're talking about. Oh, Alexa. Is that like a Siri thing? It's the Amazon Echo. And it's in a, it's in a bunch of people's homes. And it's got an, it's got an AI associate. I've got one. So all I have to do is say to the damn thing, you know, order like a toaster. And then a toaster shows up at my door. Oh my God.

Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's cool. It's cool. But there is an, it's, it's one of the examples, like people say that we're headed towards like some kind of AI disaster and an example of an early, like AI problem is on some Super Bowl ad. Somebody said, I can't remember, did an Alexa command. And like in homes all across the planet that had a Lexus, it like turned off something. I can't remember exactly what it was, but it was an example of like the strange future that we're spiraling into. And I think what you are experiencing as an artist is part of that strange future. The replication of a thing that came out of your brain that is now spread like wildfire. I mean, God, man, these Twitter, I've got so many questions on Twitter about Pepe. It's,

it's incredible. Like, um, uh, here's one. This is a good one here. This is from a, this is from Dusty triple six. This is, it looks like we got a, an alt-right feller here, possibly, but I don't know. And he wants to know his picture. It looks like he's, you know, I don't know if it's really him or not, but he looks like, uh, looks like he's like 15 maybe. But, uh, he wants to know, uh, how do you feel about liberals who think that Pepe is a hate symbol? That's, that's a good question. Um, you know, I think that, uh, that's part of the tragedy that Pepe thing is that like, you know, I can understand the whole, the try to step outside of it and see the bigger picture and like, um, you know, I see that there's a news story there

where, you know, it's a kind of an absurd news story. But, you know, when, um, these kind of a satirical, uh, left leaning kind of, um, television programs or something are trying to explain the, this alt-right thing, which, you know, shouldn't be getting this much airplay, but it, but it just keeps going and going. Um, you know, it just, uh, it just kind of competes the situation or gives, um, gives it more power than it really deserves. Right. You know, like now, now, now I feel like a lot of people are just kind of talking about the alt right now. And I don't know if I'm too close to it because I got this Pepe frog thing that's like,

you know, entangled in the, this thing. But, um, but I do think that, yeah, there is, um, um, there is, uh, some room for debate on whether that's a productive thing to continue doing it, um, or not, you know. So that's, that's, so that's why I'm just trying to do what I would do, um, just any other day, which is kind of ignore all this shit and just continue to be, um, creative, you know. Yeah, I get that. Yeah. That's what it feels like. You're just like following your art. You're not letting yourself get distracted by this, but no, but I am, but on some level I am totally, uh, entangled and distracted by it too. Like I'd like, you know, I'd like to, um,

cultivate a personality of someone who doesn't give a shit about this stuff, but on some level it does kind of wear on my soul that this thing that I created has been, you know, associated with, uh, despicable kind of distasteful stuff. But I also see the joke part of it too. And like, I'm just, uh, trying to take more lighthearted and more, um, you know, humorous approach to it. So you don't feel as though, when, when I, I mean, I know, I know it sounds crazy, but you don't feel like maybe the, if I were you and this had happened to me and I was looking at this frog and I was looking at Keck, the Egyptian God, part of me would wonder if like a spirit came through me. Does that ever drop into your head? No, no, no, not really. No. I mean, I, um, I mean,

I think creativity in general is kind of a reflection of some kind of spirit or something. Yeah. Where does, you know, where does it come from? So yeah, on some level it is, it is, um, you know, that's any artists or a creative person's kind of goal is to tap into something that's outside of themselves and to kind of, um, um, you know, hit, you know, get into some kind of groove or get into the zone or they call it, you know, and, and for me, um, just my own artistic practice, it's, it's been, uh, you know, I'm interested in meditation and stuff. I haven't really done it that much. I'd like to get more into it, but, but for me, drawing in and of itself is kind of meditative than there's this big kind of, um, you know, like adult coloring books are

kind of popular right now because, you know, people are just working these bullshit jobs and kind of locked into these, this reality that they're not totally maybe, um, satisfied with. And, um, you know, at the end of their day, you can go home and, uh, you know, put on some pure mood CDs and bust out your colored pencils and color some kind of an intricate, um, you know, geodesic vortex with beautiful colors and that totally, um, focuses your mind and, and then you don't have to worry about the alt-right or any of this other bullshit. And, um, so I think if more people were coloring, you know, the world would be a better place. Man, thank you so much for letting me have this conversation with you. It's really, really cool.

How can you- Oh yeah, I really wanted to come on this program because I really enjoy your, um, just your kind of general positive attitude and, you know, the, the, um, the way you speak about things. And, you know, it's very, it's very cartoonish, uh, and, uh, very imaginative. So, so it's nice to talk to somebody that isn't just like so blah, blah, blah, blah, like just has the same bullshit stuff to talk about. Thanks, man. Well, thank you very, thanks. I hope, I hope that there wasn't too much bullshit in here. I think we covered some great ground and I hope that, I hope that our effort here in some way or another is, is going to resurrect a beautiful, powerful, and, uh,

untainted Pepe from the, from the depths of your mind. And how can people chip in for the Kickstarter? Um, yeah, it's really easy. Basically, you could just Google save Pepe, just two words, or you just go on Kickstarter and look up save Pepe, and it's just on there. And I think you just plug in your info and you can give anywhere from a dollar to a million dollars, you know. So there's no, well. Just give me your credit card info. A million dollars. I don't know. I, actually, my brother's, my brother's kind of taking care of the technical side. What do you get for a million? What's the reward for a million? Um, there actually isn't a, a reward for a million, but, uh, but we did get, um, uh, some dude actually paid, uh, 5000 bucks for the debt,

the original death of Pepe comic that I did. So I was pretty impressed, impressed with that. It's worth it, man. You, you're the, you're the, you're the father of a myth. You're the father of a God. You're the, you're the humble father of a God that will radiate out through time. And, uh, that's a heavy responsibility, but it sounds like you've got your head in the right place. Well, I hope so. Well, thanks, Duncan. It was great talking with you, man. That was Matt Fury folks. The links to that Kickstarter are going to be in the comment section of this episode. Much thanks to on it for sponsoring this episode. Go to on it.com forward slash DTFH. You'll get 10% off and thank you. Hello, fresh head over to hello,

fresh use offer code Duncan 30 and you'll get 30 bucks off your first order. Come see us at the bell house, friends, sign up for our Patreon, but most importantly, keep listening. I love you babies and I'll see you real soon. Hare Krishna. It's Macy's friends and family. Get an extra 30% off great gifts for her just in time for Mother's Day when you use your coupon or Macy's card and take 15% off beauty essentials or shop specials she'll love while supplies last plus star rewards members earn on every purchase except gift card services and fees at Macy's. Sign up today at Macy's.com slash star rewards. Savings off regular sale and clearance prices, exclusions apply. It's Macy's friends and family. Get an extra 30% off great gifts for her just in time for Mother's

Day when you use your coupon or Macy's card and take 15% off beauty essentials or shop specials she'll love while supplies last plus star rewards members earn on every purchase except gift card services and fees at Macy's. Sign up today at Macy's.com slash star rewards. Savings off regular sale and clearance prices, exclusions apply.