Pepe the frog recently appeared on an office door at Folsom Lake College in California, reported Campus Reform.
Obviously, the rational response to this was for the school to send out a letter with this giant banner reading “Hate has no home on our campus,” calling Pepe “a symbol of bigotry,” and saying “While we do not immediately know the intentions of the person(s) who posted the picture, we are treating this incident with the highest level of seriousness and have already conducted a sweep of all Folsom Lake College campuses to look for other instances of these materials.”
We don’t “immediately know the intentions.” Yeah, that’s something you might expect to hear a detective say about the motive for a murder. And “conducted a sweep”? Just how many K9 dogs have you enlisted to sniff out cartoon frogs? Honestly, by this point, people have dressed up Pepe as just about every type of concept. You might remember that, back in 2016, two Twitter users fooledThe Daily Beast into thinking that there was a concerted effort to brand Pepe as a symbol of white nationalism. Just as they later would with milk and the OK hand, leftists up to Hillary Clinton ran with this bologna narrative. But that was over two years ago. The only thing worse than getting trolled, is being late to getting trolled. And then responding to it in as hysterical a way as possible.
Folsom Lake College continued, saying: “We have also informed the Los Rios Police Department so they can be on heightened alert for any signs that this may be part of a larger trend or pattern.”
Perhaps the biggest irony is that the college suggested it can ban hate while still upholding the First Amendment and provide a space for “mature conversation.” Right, mature as in calling the police over a meme.
