"Frog meme" redirects here. For the image of a frog riding a unicycle, see Dat Boi. For other uses, see

Pepe.

Pepe the Frog was created by American artist and cartoonist Matt Furie in 2005. Its usage as an Internet meme came from his comic Boy's Club #1. The progenitor of Boy's Club was a zine Furie made on MS Paint called Playtime, which included Pepe as a character. He posted his comic in a series of blog posts on Myspace in 2005.

Pepe was used in blog posts on Myspace in 2005 and became an inside joke on Gaia Online. In 2008, the page containing Pepe and the catchphrase was scanned and uploaded to 4chan's /b/ board, which has been described as the meme's "permanent home".

The meme took off among 4chan users, who adapted Pepe's face and catchphrase to fit different scenarios and emotions, such as melancholy, anger, and surprise. "Feels bad, man", a sad variant of the frog's "feels good, man" catchphrase, also became associated with Pepe. Color was also added; originally a black-and-white line drawing, Pepe became green with brown lips, sometimes in a blue shirt. "Feels Guy", or "Wojak", originally an unrelated character typically used to express melancholy, was eventually often paired with Pepe in user-made comics or images.

The "sad frog" variation entered usage on Tumblr by 2012. That same year, the "Smug Pepe" variant emerged. Versions of the meme appeared on Chinese social media, such as Baidu Tieba, as early as 2014. There, it has been known as shangxin qingwa (傷心青蛙), or "sad frog". In 2014, images of Pepe were shared on social media by celebrities such as Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj as Pepe became more widespread, 4chan users began referring to particularly creative and unique variants of the meme as "rare Pepes". These images, sometimes as physical paintings, were sold on eBay and posted on Craigslist 4chan users referred to those who used the meme outside the website as "normies" (or "normalfags"). Users from 4chan, Reddit, and elsewhere attempted to prevent mainstream usage of the meme by "making Pepe as shocking as possible".

In 2015, Pepe was #6 on Daily News and Analysis's list of the most important memes and the most retweeted meme on Twitter. The Daily Intelligencer called it Tumblr's "Biggest Meme of 2015". According to Inverse, it was one of the most-reblogged memes on Tumblr in 2015.