Again, I’m sort of shamelessly mashing some of the prompts together. I found myself pondering something as I was reading through the Pepe/Kek articles (by Spencer and the SPLC respectively). I would not say it reached the same heights as the alt-right’s use of Pepe, but I saw a lot of shades of an internet phenomena that had taken place about a year prior: Twitch Plays Pokemon’s run through of Pokemon Red. I have no concrete way of proving the two events are related, but the thematic similarities are downright uncanny.
Know Your Meme addresses this whole ordeal in a general sense: to give some idea of what Twitch Plays Pokemon was about, here is their overview of the 2014 event: “Twitch Plays Pokémon [was] a live-stream hosted by the video-streaming platform Twitch in which any member of the site [could] participate in a massively multiplayer online co-op version of Nintendo’s series of Pokémon games, starting with Pokémon Red, by inputting various commands in chat.” This does not really capture the madness that was this livestream: I came into it a bit late in the game as an observer, tantalized by friends and Tumblr posts, and by that point, the lore was already in full swing.
As one can imagine, the fact that any member of the site could participate meant that the more popular the livestream was, the more unplayable it became. Players grappled with the simplest of obstacles. The main character would loop in circle after circle, drop items, unintentionally release Pokemon, and any and all nicknames were just gibberish. Still, people took that chaos that they themselves were creating and made everything into some grander. Every gibberish name took on deeper meaning. Personas were developed. In-jokes. And beyond that, overtones of an entire religious mythos began to fall into place. A huge cog in that was the Helix Fossil, an item that could not be discarded – only revived Jurassic Park style later in the game. It was constantly selected to no end by the “hivemind” (the mass of players with their will acting as one), and so the main character was assumed to be consulting the Helix Fossil for guidance. Then, as this article details, things took a turn:
“Since Twitch Plays Pokémon was consulting the Helix so often, the community came to attribute positive developments to its influence. After several days of this, the Helix was promoted from ‘magic advice giver’ to ‘messiah,’ which is certainly a reasonable leap to make. Cries of ‘Praise Helix!’ arose from the chat whenever things went well, and it became so integral to the adventure that some people thought bringing the fossil to the Pokémon Laboratory was more important than actually beating the game. After 11 straight days of lugging around a useless rock, Twitch Plays Pokémon reached the lab and earned its Omanyte. He was proclaimed Lord Helix, god of anarchy, and there was much rejoicing.”
It is worth noting that to get past the more challenging sections of the game and make true progress, a democracy mode was instituted: this meant that the most requested action within spans of ten seconds would be the action that the character would take. However, there were means to switch democracy mode to anarchy mode, the play style reference above: without fail, the players constantly switched back to the will of Lord Helix, or anarchy mode. Moreover, other Pokemon came to play key roles in this mythological structure. A pidgeot, a common bird Pokemon that proved resilient enough not to be released by accident like many others, came to be known as “Bird Jesus”. Another Pokemon came to be known as a False Prophet, loyal to the other fossil players hadn’t selected.
All the while I was reading those articles about Kek/Pepe and Trump, I couldn’t help thinking back to this entire ordeal. “Kek can be both a big joke to pull on liberals and a reflection of the Alt-Right’s own self-image as serious agents of chaos in modern society.” No, this did not involve politics: given the timeline and the overlapping fanbase with Reddit, though, I can’t help but wonder if one thing led to the other, especially given the wide reach Twitch Plays Pokemon had, appearing on various news networks, clothing, artwork, and more. “More importantly, Kek was portrayed as a bringer of chaos and darkness, which happened to fit perfectly with the Alt-Right’s self image as being primarily devoted to destroying the existing world order, ” or anarchy. We’re right back to the prevailing message of the Helix Fossil.
To take it one step further, Spencer refers to a particular phenomenon that is prevalent with those utilizing Pepe for supposed political gain:
“From there, the same 4channers have found other strange frog connections, and gotten into the habit of making an unusual kind of bet. When someone posts a message or picture on a 4chan thread, their entry is marked with a multiple-digit, randomly-generated number in the comment thread, like a personal UPC. In other words, no one knows what the number will be beforehand. So Pepe enthusiasts started betting that posts featuring Pepe would end in double digits. When those posts did in fact end in double digits, the community believed to have found its greatest validation yet. It was as if the internet was saying yes, meme magic exists, and the electronic medium is standing by to spread the message that Donald Trump should be president.”
So let’s play a game change some word choices here.
Helix enthusiasts started betting that the character would select the fossil. When he did in fact select it, the community believe to have found its greatest validation yet. It was as if the game was saying yes, meme magic exists, and the Helix fossil is standing by to spread the message of anarchy. Referring back to the meme magic page on KnowYourMeme, the origins are noted to be around 2014, when Twitch Plays Pokemon was in play. No reference is made to it on the KnowYourMeme page, but especially when the primary description evoked egregore, which all but refers directly to the idea of a hivemind, I can’t help but think that Twitch Plays Pokemon is a missing link in the chain that led to Pepe/Kek down the line.
Well. this is pretty wonderful. Would love to see some screenshots if they exist.
I’m aware of Twitch Plays Pokemon and lurked in it for a while, although I did not really understand the culture enough to make sense of it as you did. At the time, there was nothing like it. Now, if there can be evidence that there’s a connection between TPP and Pepe(gate), that’s definitely worth an article. No one is asserting this as far I know.
A graduate student at the conference yesterday presented a paper on storytelling as it relates to big data and predictive analysis, with an eye to the differences between AI predictive analysis and human narrative creation. His argument roughly was that a major difference between human creation of narrative and AI’s is that humans can abstract, AI can correlate. AI makes predictions based on the past behaviors of whatever it is analyzing. Often, the AI is correct but it does not account for the possibility that behaviors can change. Prediction is based on past behavior solely. This kind of AI is used for profiles and advertising, which reinforces past behavior by assuming it will always be a subject’s pattern without changes. An fairly benign example is targeted advertising, while a more sinister type is racial profiling or profiling based on past actions by the police or by creditors. The reason I bring this up is it seems to me that in some of these instances like TPP and Pepegate (if I can call it that), hiveminds begin to behave in a like fashion. Participants begin to act in predictable ways based on the actions of the hivemind’s past, as if the past actions of the hive are holy writ that needs to be adhered to. There’s a feeling that actions are prophesised or predetermined by fate. Given that these are humans acting and not AI, the process is actually wrought with much more complexity (what makes the hivemind behavior more like AI behavior is speed and power due to focus created by focus on a single objective). The hivemind’s ability to correlate large amounts of data seems to approach some kind of supercomputer, but you also have individual actors with their various agendas, affects, ironies, and so on involved and offering motivation for keeping the game going.
This is a bit of a ramble n my part, but the point I wanted to make is that you’re showing us that Pepegate is primarily a game, too, and that game is motivated in large part by something OTHER THAN POLITICS. The participants fall in love with an idea, or rather with an engine that provides the opportunity for the hive to function in a way that achieves a certain goal. The goal can be pretty arbitrary (bird Jesus, the achievement of the Helix, the grasping of some kind of Grail whatever it may be, the election of Donald Trump). There is a rush, there is a profound sense of purpose and euphoria, in this achievement.
I only vaguely followed Twitch Plays Pokemon so I found your blog post super interesting! It also yanked out a memory I forgot I had from reddit a few years back, where the whole site fought over/painted a 1000×1000 pixel canvas for a period of weeks.
This is an article with an overview of the project: https://www.konbini.com/en/lifestyle/millions-collaborated-to-make-this-interactive-painting-on-reddit/
And here’s a cool interactive map I found of the final product: https://draemm.li/various/place-atlas/
I also think you’re right to think about meme magic and the odd validation that came from twitch plays pokemon, I hope there isn’t a direct connection to that and pepe/kek shit but your analysis was super developed and thought-provoking. I did some digging and one cool thing about the reddit paint thing is that 4chan tried to create a kekistan flag to “troll” reddit, and reddit just painted a queer flag over it until it was unrecognizable. Small victories.