Feels Good Man

A single panel, Pepe pulling his trousers down to urinate, explaining "feels good man", was scanned and posted to 4chan, and separated from the comic entirely. Through MySpace, 4chan and Tumblr it became a reaction face with a grammar of its own: Sad Frog, Smug Frog, Angry Pepe, and the "rare Pepes" that users watermarked and hoarded as if scarcity applied to a JPEG. By late 2014 it had reached the mainstream, with Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj both posting Pepes, and that arrival is exactly what made parts of 4chan want it back.

Part of Pepe

92 moments in this segment.

1. 2008 - Slowpoke says "feels good man". A Feels Good Man exploitable built on the Pokémon character Slowpoke. From 2008, users photoshopped Pepe's face from the comic's final frame onto other characters, with Pokémon among the most common hosts.
2. 2008 - John Goodman, "eels good man". The John Goodman pun version of the catchphrase. Matt Furie named these his favourite iteration, recalling a page of them a friend sent him: "another had John Goodman and said 'eels good man.' That was my favorite one I think."
3. 2009-01-22 - The original Sad Frog, "Feels Bad Man". Sad Frog: Matt Furie's Pepe drawing altered with the mouth flipped and the caption "Feels Bad Man". The earliest archived 4chan thread carrying it dates to January 22nd, 2009. It became the antithesis of Feels Good Man, used to denote failure or disappointment.
4. 2009-06-11 - Sad Frog and "You will never". The Sad Frog pairing with the "You Will Never X" format. The original 4chan /a/ thread was never archived; this copy was reuploaded to the Polish image host Kyon on June 11th, 2009.
5. 2009 - Sad Frog, the disappointment face. A Sad Frog example from the record. The image is posted, or invoked as "feelsbadman.jpg", to denote failure or disappointment.
6. 2009 - Sad Frog, "You will never". A Sad Frog example in the "You Will Never X" format, the pairing the record dates to 2009 and which fixed the character as a symbol of unreachable things.
7. 2009 - Sad Frog as a 4chan reaction image. One of the Sad Frog images collected in the record's Spread section, from the years when the frog circulated across 4chan boards and the bodybuilding forums.
8. 2009 - Sad Frog, a Feels Bad Man variation. A variation on the Sad Frog drawing. The record notes Feels Bad Man had its own Facebook group from December 2009 and a single-image website, Feelsbadman.com, from December 2010.
9. 2009 - Sad Frog in wider circulation. A Sad Frog example from the record. Sad Frog is one of the reaction faces, alongside Feels Good Man, Smug Frog and Angry Pepe, that carried Pepe across the image boards.
10. 2009 - Sad Frog, the antithesis of Feels Good Man. A Sad Frog example. The record frames the depressed frog as the direct counterpart to the Feels Good Man panel it was edited from.
11. 2009 - Gaia Online's "feels good man" manga panel. A panel from Gaia Online's storyline manga, produced for a Halloween event in 2009, in which the character The Overseer answers a question about refusing to wear clothes with "Feels good man". An early crossing of the catchphrase into a commercial web property.
12. 2009-08-17 - Sad Frog on the bodybuilding forums. The Sad Frog image as posted to the Body Building Forums on August 17th, 2009 with the caption "not good man". The forums were one of the two communities, alongside 4chan, where the reaction face first circulated.
13. 2010 - feelsbadman.jpg in a greentext story. Sad Frog as used in the 4chan greentext story format, which through 2010 made "feelsbadman.jpg" a standard way of closing out a story of failure on the /mu/, /r9k/ and /sp/ boards.
14. 2011-06-02 - The original Smug Frog. Smug Frog, the self-satisfied Pepe. The oldest archived post carrying it is a 4chan /tv/ thread from June 2nd, 2011 mocking the humour of The Big Bang Theory. Where Sad Frog is Wojak's companion, Smug Frog is drawn antagonising him.
15. 2014-05-09 - Angry Pepe posted to 4chan's /pol/. The second documented use of the Angry Pepe reaction image, posted in a /pol/ reply on May 9th, 2014 complaining about recreational drinking. The oldest retrievable use had appeared on /r9k/ eleven days earlier.
16. 2014 - Angry Pepe, the hostile frog. A notable example of Angry Pepe, the hostile-looking variant of Pepe the Frog used to signal rage and intense frustration.
17. 2014 - Angry Pepe as an animated reaction. An animated Angry Pepe from the record's notable examples. The variant is normally posted as a reaction rather than as a captioned macro.
18. 2014 - Angry Pepe, red-faced. One of the Angry Pepe examples collected in the record. The variant is described as a hostile counterpart to the relaxed Feels Good Man version of the character.
19. 2014 - Angry Pepe in motion. An animated Angry Pepe example. The image circulated on 4chan's /r9k/, /pol/ and /g/ boards, on Reddit and on Tumblr.
20. 2014 - Angry Pepe as a captioned macro. An Angry Pepe example from the record, of the kind posted with expressions of rage and frustration.
21. 2014 - Angry Pepe, another circulating version. One of the Angry Pepe variations collected in the record's notable examples section.
22. 2014 - Angry Pepe among the reaction faces. Angry Pepe, the hostile variant, as listed in the main record's roll call of Pepe reaction faces alongside Feels Good Man, Sad Frog, Smug Frog and Well Meme'd. It is normally posted with expressions of rage and intense frustration.
23. 2014 - Smug Frog, animated. An animated Smug Frog from the record's notable examples, made during the 2014 wave when the image was being reworked constantly.
24. 2014 - Smug Frog, self-satisfied. A Smug Frog example. The face carries the smugness of having got the better of someone, which is why it so often appears opposite Wojak.
25. 2014 - Smug Frog as a derivative. One of the many Smug Frog derivatives the record says were spawned in 2014, when the image began being used far more heavily than in its first three years.
26. 2014 - Smug Frog, redrawn. A redrawn Smug Frog from the record's examples. The face later supplied the expression for Pepe Punch.
27. 2014 - Smug Frog in a reaction. A Smug Frog example of the kind posted as a reply. The variant is treated as a separate character from Sad Frog despite the shared origin.
28. 2014 - Smug Frog, another version. One of the Smug Frog examples collected in the record's notable examples section.
29. 2014 - Pixel-art RARE frog. A frog face rendered in chunky yellow and black pixels beside the word 'RARE' in blocky capitals.
30. 2014 - Not my problem. A green frog lying flat on his back on a blue field with the words 'NOT MY PROBLEM' set in white above him.
31. 2014 - Two frogs under the northern lights. A pixel-style scene of two frogs seated on grass watching an aurora over the sea, a Nordic cross flag and a small human figure nearby.
32. 2014 - The Pepevillain album parody. A greyscale parody of an MF DOOM record sleeve: a frog wearing the metal gladiator mask, captioned 'My rare MadVillainy pepe'.
33. 2014 - Bulbasaur frog hybrid. A squat teal creature with a green bulb on its back and the frog's heavy-lidded eyes and long mouth.
34. 2014 - The dank LSD Pepe card. A psychedelic ink drawing of a frog head in swirling colour, captioned about an LSD Pepe appearing out of nowhere and to upvote within five seconds.
35. 2014 - The uwu frog. A mint-green frog on a pink scribbled background with a purple lip and the letters 'uwu' written beside it.
36. 2014 - Tattooed rapper frog. A frog drawn with coloured hair, face tattoos and a grill, in the style of a rap artist portrait.
37. 2014 - Rare police Pepe from Poland. A photograph of a police car in Poland with a frog and the words 'ultramega rzadkie police pepe' drawn in the dust on the rear windscreen.
38. 2014 - The multiverse Pepe card. A cosmic-toned frog with glitched title lettering and a warning to upvote within forty-two seconds or be stuck between dimensions forever.
39. 2014 - The common Pepe drawing. A large plain frog resting on its front, drawn in flat green with the long mouth and half-closed eyes, on white.
40. 2014 - Authenticating a rare Pepe card. A frog card annotated with red callout boxes pointing to a clover matrix, a microprinted serial number and fluorescent pigments.
41. 2014 - The Tula plum Pepe. A dark purple frog in a peaked cap over a photographic background, with pink title text and a block of instructions for downloading the image.
42. 2014 - It's not easy being meme. A Kermit and frog hybrid in green with the hand-lettered line 'It's not easy being Meme', captioned as Rare Pepe number 199.
43. 2014 - Rendered three-dimensional frog. A polished digital render of a teal-grey frog with heavy eyelids and a downturned mouth, lit against a dark background.
44. 2014 - Rare Pepe game box parody. A mock game advertisement reading 'RARE PEPE - 30 memes, one epic collection, only on Xbox One' over a grinning green reptilian frog in sunglasses.
45. 2014 - Rare Pepe boots. A photograph of a pair of green rubber boots with moulded frog faces on the toes, worn with white socks, captioned 'Rare Pepe Boots'.
46. 2014 - Limited edition rare Pepe warning card. A frog with a glowing eye over a purple and orange background, framed by small print declaring the copy limited and its duplication prohibited.
47. 2014 - The rarest universe Pepe. A frog rendered in galaxy colours with stars showing through, captioned as the rarest universe Pepe that appears once every successful absorb session.
48. 2014 - Rare Pepe Clicker on a phone. A hand holding a phone running a game called 'RARE PEPE CLICKER', with the instruction 'FIND THE RAREST PEPE!' and a frog drawn beside the screen.
49. 2014 - Medium-rare Pepe steak. A photograph of a cooked steak on a plate whose grain reads as the frog's face, posted with the caption 'medium-rare pepe' and a reply complaining about the blog.
50. 2014 - Rare Pepe do not steal. A frog with a hand raised to his chin in front of a rainbow arc, with a black bar beneath reading 'Rare Pepe do not steal'.
51. 2014 - Behold, the cosmic Pepe. A frog head filled with a starfield, captioned as the cosmic Pepe located at the edge of the observable universe.
52. 2014 - The nuclear cosmic entity Pepe. A glittering multicoloured frog beside a long block of text naming it a diamond plutonium kryptonite uranium radioactive cosmic entity Pepe.
53. 2014 - The super rare anti-matter Pepe. A pale blue glowing frog on a green congratulations card announcing that a super rare anti-matter Pepe has been found.
54. 2014 - The wild tritium Pepe. A frog outlined in radioactive green over a dark background, captioned 'Out of nowhere appears a wild Tritium Pepe' with an instruction to upvote in five seconds.
55. 2014 - The ultra rare albino Pepe. A white frog with both hands pressed to its cheeks against a starry background, under a banner claiming it is property of the US federal government.
56. 2014-08-13 - 4chan notices Pepe has changed. Smug Frog examples from the August 13th, 2014 /v/ thread that produced the first recorded discussion of the variant, where posters debated why Pepe had turned from sad to smug, newfound optimism, or the average user acclimatising to 4chan.
57. 2014-11-08 - Katy Perry's crying Pepe tweet. Katy Perry tweeted a crying Pepe on November 8th, 2014 with the caption "Australian jet lag got me like". The tweet went on to collect over 17,000 likes, and marks the point where the image board reaction face turned into mainstream celebrity shorthand. Nicki Minaj posted her own Pepe six weeks later.
58. 2014-12-09 - Nu Pepe, the crossed-arms frog. The Nu Pepe depiction: Pepe drawn with his arms crossed in a blue long-sleeved shirt, a version the record traces to an image likened to Javert from Les Misérables that was highlighted on the Finnish imageboard Ylilauta on December 9th, 2014.
59. 2015-01-24 - Nu Pepe in a Bane mask. An edited Nu Pepe wearing a Bane mask, posted to the Russian imageboard Dvach on January 24th, 2015. The variant crossed three national image boards, Finnish, Russian and 4chan, in under three months.
60. 2015-02-09 - Angry Pepe variations on Tumblr. Variations of the Angry Pepe image posted by Tumblr user enemy-stand on February 9th, 2015, which gathered more than 12,500 notes in a week. By then the image had spread from /r9k/ to /pol/, Reddit and the bodybuilding forums.
61. 2015-03-01 - Nu Pepe is named on 4chan's /qa/. The unedited image posted to 4chan's /qa/ board on March 1st, 2015, where it was christened "nu pepe" and nominated as "the official meme of /qa/". It was stickied on the /s4s/ board the next day.
62. 2015-06-08 - An early video explainer of the Pepe meme. A short 2015 summary of where Pepe came from and how the meme was being used, drawing on Know Your Meme. It predates the character's political contest, and the uploader concedes in the notes that the comic's title is misstated in the video. Its value is as a record of how the meme was understood in mid-2015.
63. 2016-03-25 - Apu Apustaja arrives on 4chan's /b/. The Apu Apustaja version of Pepe, a deliberately crude redraw in the style of Spurdo Spärde, posted to 4chan's /b/ board on March 25th, 2016 with a misspelled caption about a "food help helper".
64. 2016-03-26 - Apu Apustaja's missing food help helper. A follow-up Apu Apustaja thread posted to 4chan's /b/ on March 26th, 2016, in which the character complains that his "food help helper" has gone missing.
65. 2016-04-19 - An Apu Apustaja thread on 4chan's /int/. Illustrations of Apu Apustaja from a thread submitted to 4chan's /int/ board on April 19th, 2016. The character had crossed over from Ylilauta to 4chan, where posters call him "Helper".
66. 2016 - Apu Apustaja, the help helper. An Apu Apustaja example: the crudely redrawn Pepe whose name translates from Finnish as "help helper".
67. 2016 - Apu Apustaja as a reaction image. One of the Apu Apustaja examples collected in the record. The variant became one of the most widely posted Pepe derivatives.
68. 2016 - Apu Apustaja, drawn in the Spurdo style. An Apu Apustaja illustration in the deliberately poor drawing style borrowed from Spurdo Spärde, the earlier Finnish image board character.
69. 2016 - Apu Apustaja on the image boards. An Apu Apustaja example from the record. The character is posted on both Ylilauta and 4chan, where he is known as "Helper".
70. 2016 - Apu Apustaja, another helper drawing. One of the Apu Apustaja variations collected in the record's examples section.
71. 2016 - The source images behind Pepe Punch. The imagery Pepe Punch is built from: the Dragon Ball character Vegeta rearing back a punch towards the viewer, and the Welcome To The Family, Son parodies in which Pepe appeared on 4chan from July 2016. The finished meme combines that pose with the Smug Frog face.
72. 2016-07-30 - Peep the Toad, the off-brand Pepe. The original Peep the Toad post, submitted to Tumblr on July 30th, 2016: an anthropomorphic toad captioned "when u cant afford quality name brand memes so u have to settle for / peep the toad". It gathered over 134,000 notes and spread to /r/dankmemes and /r/me_irl.
73. 2016-08-25 - Behind the Meme on Pepe's origins. A meme-history channel recounts the character's route from Matt Furie's comic to the imageboards and the variant Pepes that followed. It was posted in August 2016, weeks before the Anti-Defamation League added the character to its hate-symbol database, and already refers to the fight over the meme in that year's US election.
74. 2016-10-03 - Apu Apustaja's Firefly parody reaches Reddit. A screenshot of the 4chan post pairing Apu Apustaja with parody lyrics for the Firefly theme song, which reached the front page of the /r/4chan subreddit on October 3rd, 2016.
75. 2016-10-23 - Peep the Toad in circulation. A third Peep the Toad example. By February 2017 the toad had its own posts on /r/memeeconomy asking for an estimate of its value.
76. 2016-10-23 - Peep the Toad on Facebook. An example from the Peep the Toad Facebook page, launched on October 23rd, 2016 to collect versions of the off-brand toad character.
77. 2016-10-23 - Peep the Toad, settling for less. A second Peep the Toad example from the character's Facebook page. The joke depends entirely on the toad being a visibly worse Pepe.
78. 2016-10-31 - Pepe carved into a Halloween pumpkin. A jack-o'-lantern carved with Pepe the Frog's face, photographed on 31 October 2016. By this point the character had travelled far beyond the comic it came from and into everyday amateur use.
79. 2017-01-02 - Wendy's deleted Pepe tweet. Wendy's answered a request for memes with Pepe drawn as its own mascot on January 2nd, 2017, then deleted the tweet after criticism, saying "our community manager was unaware of the recent evolution of the Pepe meme's meaning". A brand discovering mid-post that the frog had become contested.
80. 2017-05-11 - A video essay on Pepe's arc. An essay made in the days after Furie killed the character, tracing Pepe from the comic through the imageboards to the 2016 campaign and treating the meme as a case study in how online communities take ownership of an image. Some of the origin details in its notes, including the year and platform it gives for the character's first appearance, do not match later research.
81. 2017 - Artist in a Pepe mask at Ruby Beach. The artist XVALA stands on Ruby Beach in Olympic National Park, Washington, wearing a rubber Pepe the Frog mask. The file date records the 2019 upload; the description states the photograph was made in 2017.
82. 2017 - Zara's frog-patch skirt. The denim skirt Zara pulled from sale in April 2017 after shoppers said its frog patches resembled Pepe. Zara told The Guardian there was "absolutely no link", and that the artist Mario de Santiago had taken the design from a wall painting he had made with friends years earlier. Other Twitter users argued the frog was Old Man Jenkins from Spongebob Squarepants.
83. 2018 - Pepe Punch aimed at the viewer. A Pepe Punch example. The frog winds up a punch from the viewer's perspective, so the image reads as a punch thrown at whoever it is replying to.
84. 2018 - Pepe Punch as a comment reply. One of the Pepe Punch examples collected in the record, of the kind posted in comment threads to imply punching the original poster.
85. 2018 - Pepe Punch, captioned. A captioned Pepe Punch example. The variant pairs the Smug Frog face with the winding-up pose.
86. 2018-08-13 - Pepe Punch on 4chan's /biz/. One of the earliest datable uses of Pepe Punch, posted to 4chan's business board on August 13th, 2018 with the caption "Yes, I hope you don't actually take /biz/ seriously. If you do, than this punch is for you."
87. 2018-12-21 - Know Your Meme revisits Pepe. A short retrospective from Know Your Meme, made for a series marking the site's tenth anniversary, summarising the character's route from the comic to the imageboards to political symbol. It is the meme archive's own condensed account of the story it had documented as it happened.
88. 2019-11-01 - Pepe Punch, "Hello fed department". Pepe Punch posted to 4chan's /pol/ board on November 1st, 2019 captioned "Hello fed department", the reaction image used, as it usually is, to imply a punch thrown at whoever is reading.
89. 2019-11-08 - "One Punch PEPE" on DeviantArt. An illustrated redraw of Pepe Punch uploaded to DeviantArt by user HWANKO on November 8th, 2019 under the title "One Punch PEPE".
90. 2019-12-07 - Pepe Punch in r/MinecraftMemes. A Pepe Punch meme posted to the r/MinecraftMemes subreddit on December 7th, 2019, which gathered more than 6,500 upvotes. The variant had moved well beyond 4chan by this point.
91. 2021-08-07 - The story of Pepe on Twitch. theScore esports traces how Pepe became the base image for a large family of Twitch emotes, including the sad and smug variants that spread far beyond the message boards where they started. The video opens with its own warning about the character's association with hate speech and states that it does not endorse those uses.
92. 2022-06-18 - Pepe costume at the Pyrkon convention. A visitor to the Pyrkon convention wears a full Pepe the Frog costume in June 2022, more than fifteen years after the character first appeared in print.