The Pepe progression

Pepe the Frog is well known these days and appears in many different memes with a myriad of different captions. These days you’ll see a rare Pepe pop up on your facebook news feed or a sad Pepe but originally Pepe was created by Matt Furie who created a small comic series with Pepe as one of the main characters that went by the name Boy’s Club. The Boy’s club was essentially a comic that “satirized and celebrated the lifestyle of 20-something bros”.
source: http://www.vice.com/read/feels-good-man-728
Matt Furie began making the comics in 2005 and shared it to myspace which at the time was still a thing. In 2008 Pepe began picking up steam as a feel’s good man reaction image.
source: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/pepe-the-frog

Pepe was able to gain a lot of popularity through sites like 4chan and reddit where people shared memes among their respective communities and from the traffic those websites receive the funny memes tend to catch on very quickly, Pepe being one of them. An online video game named Gaia also embraced “feels good man” in their own community in 2009 for a Halloween comic. With an increased spread of the words “feels good man” there was bound to be an increased amount of searches made, and the Google Trends linked further below shows that there was a surge of searches in September and October 2009 which further backs this assumption.

The ‘feels good man’ Pepe debuted in this particular comic:

source: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/feels-good-man
A year later people turned Pepe into a feels bad man meme by changing his facial expression. At this point Pepe was becoming more and more popular which attracted more attention to the meme and what could be done with it. These days Pepe has been moulded into more than a handful of different memes with the current trendy one being a Donald Trump Pepe. The Pepe is distinguishable by being dressed in a suit & tie with a Trump-esque hairstyle.

Donald Trump himself even embraced himself in meme form with this tweet that links to a montage video featuring Trump early on in his political liftoff last year.  https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/653856168402681856?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

source: https://i.imgflip.com/1aa9x4.jpg

The popularity of Pepe memes also continues to grow that even celebrities have used them to illustrate feelings and emotions just like regular people. Yes its true, celebrities are memers at heart too!

https://twitter.com/katyperry/status/531011411720151041/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

source: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/4chans-frog-meme-went-mainstream-so-they-tried-to-kill-it

The political Pepe isn’t the only new one, people are creating more and more weird and funky Pepes every day in hopes of having the new funny, trendy meme.
Below we have a random meme that someone made in order to get a laugh out of people.

source : https://img.ifcdn.com/images/c24eb57dce4157837f74661f63a70709be84aacb13bcfa9fa578446bfcdf5cb4_1.jpg

https://www.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%22feels%20good%20man%22,%22matt%20furie%22

This google trend shows that “feels good man” popped up some time around late 2007, early 2008 and by the end of the year spiked in popularity. Matt Furie on the other hand had only a fraction of the initial spike in 2008 and very recently caught up to “feels good man” just last month in September 2016. Matt is still active and still creates art to this day but the Pepe memes definitely contributed considerably to his increased popularity as of late.

Throughout my research of this topic I have discovered that people treat memes somewhat like a stock market, things are in and some things aren’t. Every meme has its own ‘shelf life’ if you will. Pepe memes are still going strong these days which would make them fairly high value in the ‘stock market’ of memes. This funny video I found on youtube can help you understand how the market works and just give you a good laugh.

These days making memes doesn’t even require the use of a photo editing software, you can simply search up a meme and insert text on a website that will generate the image for you. Unless you’re trying to create a very rare pepe to be sold in black market I think these will generally suffice.
I’ve created my own Pepe meme below that only those in our lecture will understand.

source: https://imgflip.com/i/1cuj7g credits: Me

Deep, dark, what’s the difference?

What is the deep web and what is it used for?

The deep web goes by a handful of different names, invisible web, deep web, hidden web and the list goes on.  The deep web is essentially the part of the internet that you won’t find just by searched for it through a search engine, you need to know where to look to find it. The opposite of the deep web would be the ‘surface web’, everything that you can find on the surface or simply by using a search engine. To put things into perspective, the big three search engines only access a tiny fraction of a percentage of the internet (0.03%). Though this is a 2013 statistic and the internet does continue to grow exponentially, you should begin to grow an appreciation for the relative size of the deep web. (http://oedb.org/ilibrarian/invisible-web/)

The deep web began expanding because the US government needed to communicate with their intelligence in a discreet and undetectable way in the 90s. They also created TOR, which is the most popular browser used to access the dark web, which I will get into later on. Due to the nature of the content on the dark web it is highly recommended that anyone browsing the dark web use a browser that keeps you anonymous, otherwise you’ll probably get caught and end up in jail. I don’t know from experience but apparently to access most of the websites in the dark web you have to be using a browser like TOR because the websites are TOR encrypted!

Alright so how does it work? How does so much content stay off the search engines? There are a bunch of different reasons why that is.

I’ll just post the list of examples below, from: http://oedb.org/ilibrarian/invisible-web/

• Data that needs to be accessed by a search interface
• Results of database queries
• Subscription-only information and other password-protected data
• Pages that are not linked to by any other page
• Technically limited content, such as that requiring CAPTCHA technology
• Text content that exists outside of conventional http:// or https:// protocols

 

As you can see some of these things aren’t that obvious to everyone that they are a part of the deep web, such as content behind a paywall or subscription. Yet at the same time you can also see how ‘easy’ it is to make a website that won’t be discovered by a simple search online.

Now of course because the websites that exist in the deep web aren’t so easy to find people are bound to abuse this by conducting business or posting things that won’t be actively under the public eye. Normally when a website contains illegal material it can and usually will be taken down within a reasonable time frame. However, when your website is only available to the people who know it’s there then you can conduct business with less risk of being discovered. One business in particular that profits well on the deep web is drug dealing.

There is somewhat of a distinction however with these illegal activities, most people would refer to this as not just the deep web but more specifically the dark net or dark web. The deep web is very general and covers just about anything, the dark net is more specific to ‘dark/shady’ dealings and activities.

Most likely one of the most common uses of the dark net is buying and selling drugs.

http://www.ibtimes.com/mdma-cocaine-sales-help-dark-net-drug-sites-make-over-100-million-annually-without-2050890

According to this website, the market is huge and makes buying drugs easier than it has ever been, there’s no more need to find some sketchy dealer at the street corner. Instead, you can buy the product online where you know you’ll consistently be getting the same quality stuff. Not only that but it will get delivered right to your door and you can pretty much be assured it will come because of the scale of the website, they want to make as much money as possible and the best way to do that is to operate a ‘legitimate business’. One of the most popular dark web resources for buying and selling drugs was known as “Silk Road” and only recently it was shut down and it’s creator is spending life in prison.

There are a handful of other things that go on in the dark web such as, child pornography, fake documents such as passports, purchasing of copied credit cards and the list goes on, you’ll never really know what you’ll find unless you check yourself because every article about it will tell you a personalized experience.

Source: http://www.deepwebtech.com/

This picture accurately depicts exactly what I’ve been going on about, the web is analogous to an iceberg in that you can only see the tip of it and everything else is deep below the ocean level.

Hopefully I made understanding the deep and dark web as simple as possible for you!

Netiquette

Netiquette, what is it? The word itself is pretty self-explanatory, it is etiquette on the internet. It is how you behave yourself on the internet along with the dos and don’ts. I’ll begin with the do’s of the internet followed by the don’ts. Whenever you post make sure that what you’re saying is relevant and not off topic. Writing properly is important online as well, using a lot of slang and a lack of punctuation will make it more difficult for people to understand you. Being respectful to other people’s opinions is also part of netiquette, you will often find things you disagree with online but remaining calm and explaining your side or your opinion in a respectful manner is the correct way to go about it. Always remember that the internet is full of real people and that if you wouldn’t say it to someone in person then it’s not ok to say it to them online just because you’re hiding behind an avatar or an alias. Piggybacking on the idea that everyone online is real, every time you post something that was taken from someone or somewhere else remember to credit them when its due, nobody likes their work taken credit for by somebody else.

Never post spam, no one likes it and the admins are most likely going to remove the content anyways and will likely punish you for doing so or will give you a warning if they’re tolerant. Never post anything offensive especially if its of a discriminatory nature, sexist nature, racist nature. Aside from the fact that these are very offensive and you shouldn’t be saying them in the first place, they can be traced back to you and can tarnish your reputation. Something a bit less serious but never talk in all CAPS, you come off as angry and that you’re always yelling. You don’t want to come off as angry because that baits the trolls in and you don’t want to be yelling because you’d be escalating to a potential argument with someone that could have easily been avoided. There is something called Poe’s law that refers to the lack of expression on the internet due to no facial expression and lack of tone, talking in caps automatically gives the impression to someone that you’re angry and screaming and is essentially the only way to change your tone without changing what you’ve written.

Netiquette is not the same on all parts of the internet, apply the same logic you would when travelling to somewhere foreign. Assess the way people behave themselves on each platform as well before you post or join in on the discussion. For example, you wouldn’t post memes in a serious discussion online but when commenting on a reddit thread you generally have the freedom to do so, also depending on the subreddit of course. There’s a time and a place for everything, make sure that you pay attention to your ‘surroundings’. One of the easiest ways to determine what is appropriate and what isn’t is by figuring out who the general audience that will be taking part in the discussion or visiting the website. If you know kids will be frequenting a website, then you especially should avoid posting inappropriate content, its just a dick move and you shouldn’t do it, refer back to the earlier point I made about being respectful online.

Here is a picture that I found that sums up netiquette very simply with regards to whenever you want to post something on social media just refer to this picture and you will avoid trouble for yourself and avoid hurting someone’s feelings.

Source: (http://gmsela8.weebly.com/netiquette.html)

Here’s a popular clip from the show Arthur: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHrZRJR4igQ

Unfortunately we live in a world where people DO lie on the internet, and it is due to the fact that many people on the internet don’t follow netiquette.

Don’t be one of those people, don’t lie on the internet and practice netiquette!