#yes i used korn font

[magg0t-king]

*cough silent Hill background*

*cough @s3r3n44 cough*

[auseyre]

I'm way too lazy to copy that Marvel What If font rn but...what if

What if Korn took Nampheung, not out of obsession or some freaky desire to attic wife her, but to please his father? I think it’s pretty much a given that his recitation of the shooting events is a lie and that Gun’s is closer to the truth. 

In both versions, though, they are there trying to persuade Nampheung to come home again because their dad is insisting. I’m guessing that since Nampheung has yet another son, their father is ready for her to come back into the fold, bringing her kids with her. Korn kills her husband, obviously to get him out of the way. But I think that he didn’t want even more competition against his own sons for a place in the family. Vegas and Macau were enough. So he brings her and leaves Porsche and Chay behind. 

And then he tells his father the same story he told Gun, but in reverse. Gun freaked out. Gun killed Ted. Gun killed Porsche and Chay because he’s obsessed with Nampheung. Gun tried to rape her. Keep her locked away and safe from Gun. It’s enough to make Gun completely lose favor with his father. Nampheung either tries to kill herself because she thinks her sons are dead as well, or Korn just keeps her drugged up. Now he’s eliminated both rivals for the head of the family in one fell swoop. After his father dies, he keeps her because why not? She’s completely under his control and someday he might need her as a weapon/hostage (turns out he does). 

What if Porsche is actually Gun’s son? Gun doesn’t know it, Nampheung didn’t tell him — I’m thinking one night of passion and her realizing that is she was with him, she’d never escape the Mafia life, or they knew their dad would never allow it. So she just ran off with Pat, who married her to protect her and the baby (maybe he was already in love with her, maybe they fell in love later.) But Korn knows it or at least he’s pretty sure of it. It would explain his interest in Porsche but not Chay, who would presumably be more malleable for Korn’s needs. (I know people have explored this possibility in way more depth than I can).

Yes, I know that would make Porsche and Kinn actual cousins, but look, I’m watching a show where a severed head in a box is considered a gift, and a torture raincoat standard equipment. Every romantic relationship on this show is ignoring the guy on the ship waving blood-red semaphore flags in frantic “danger, Will Robinson” messages. I promise you, my line is not a consensual romantic relationship between two blood-related adults who didn’t even grow up together. 

TBH, I’m just throwing this out here because I want Porsche and Vegas and Macau and Chay to have to navigate an enemies-to-brothers relationship. Porsche and Vegas, two men conditioned to love and protect their brothers, having to deal with their super awkward relationship. Chay and Macau, both used to being the adored baby brother, unable to stifle their resentment and confusion. Heck, they’re still babies, so send them off to camp together so we can have a Parent Trap type bonding situation. Y’all I just want one of those cheesy 80s, defensive “that’s my brother!” moments.

What if Porsche becoming Tankhun’s bodyguard was meant to be a test by both Khun and Korn as well as taking Porsche off of the hot seat for a minute? Korn brings Porsche in, is delighted by his moxie, puts him on the board as an actual player, and then he’s just a disaster who almost gets himself killed by the Minor Family. So, letting him be Tankhun’s bodyguard got him out of the spotlight for a minute, long enough for the Minor family to move on to other grudges. And it was a test to see if he had any ambition, any edge at all. That’s why Korn does not want him to guard anybody else when Porsche suggests it. He passed the test and needs to stay in play. 

Khun sees Kinn’s interest in Porsche. After all, Kinn comes personally to rescue Porsche from his fish-killing punishment. Switching Pete and Porsche protects him from Minor family retaliation(because come on, do we really think that Vegas was gonna let that go? If he hadn’t wanted to use Porsche, he would absolutely have gotten revenge.) It also gives Khun a chance to study Porsche and see if he’s worthy of Kinn’s attention. When he decides he is, he nudges him back toward Kinn ...mentioning the meeting, telling him that Kinn said he was useless and would get killed, eventually “giving” him back to Kinn with the flimsiest excuse. 

@iamcon-fu-sion mentions some of these ideas about the bodyguard situation in their KP rewatch and I was so happy to see that because I constantly think I’m over analysing everything about this show(I mean I’m not gonna stop though). 

What if Ken wasn’t the original mole? What if it was a lower-level bodyguard, and he didn’t betray the main family until Porsche came onto the scene? Maybe he’d already turned down the offer before. Then Big gets hurt and Porsche comes along out of nowhere. By rights, Ken should have moved into Big’s spot, but Porsche stops that, humiliating them in the process. Porsche continually fucks up and yet still fails upward. Sure, they made fun of him being Tankhun’s bodyguard, but realistically, Tankhun has the best bodyguards they have other than Big and Ken. 

Arm and Pete are constantly pulled into other missions because they’re so valuable and talented. Maybe no one wants the job, but it’s still one of the most high-ranking. Then, when Ken does get the head bodyguard job, it’s yanked back out from under him. He has no idea that Porsche is getting all kinds of nepo baby/sugar baby privileges, but whatever is going on is enough to leave him bitter, angry, and betrayed enough to go over to the minor family. 

editing this because where did I get Ted for the Kittisawasd dad? I ...have no idea.

[snickerdoodlles]

was rewatching bb (as one does) and the scene in the cafeteria when Korn winks at wai... If u look closely i think he's actually winking at pran,, responding to prans nod. also, the angle also makes it seem like it. this ask has no point i just got excited and u have your kornpran friendship agenda so yeah...they're besties who tease wai and pat together. thank u for your service btw. i absolutely love all your bb fics...💗💗💗💗💗

you know when someone waves at you and you wave back, only to realize the person was actually waving at the person behind you? that’s korn winking at wai or pat. it’s never actually for them, it’s a signal to his bestie pran standing behind them that the day’s prank is a-go

the kornpran agenda is ALWAYS import, so thank u for thinking of me during your rewatch 🥺💕 and thank you for you’re sweet words ajkfdkjdf, here’s a sneak peek at the first ~600 words or so of my next kornpran friendship WIP ❤❤ (*see full snippet under the read more)

):)  (:(

Korn’s going to pass all his classes thanks to his new best friend.

Pran is the best study buddy. Sure, he has negative interest in learning engineering concepts, but he lets Korn rant when he’s stuck. (“Really?” “Honestly, I’m so used to Wai bitching as we work that it’s the perfect white noise to me now.” “I feel unloved.” “What can I say? I thrive when you suffer.”) It’s so much better than studying with Pat or Mo--Korn actually gets a chance to figure shit out, instead of one of the geniuses just doing his homework with a vague Like this, see?

So yeah, reserving a room with Pran? Secret to academic success right here. Korn’s currently spending today’s study date just whining about his stupid calculus professor, but he’s doing it with his head pillowed on his textbook and he’s probably absorbing the information via osmosis or something.

“No cheat sheets unless they’re permanent tattoos,” Korn mimics in his whiniest voice. “Asshole. Professor Worapong says he’ll give us all the equations we need, but in the midterm he only gave us the general equation, which we’d spent a week deriving all our other equations from at the start of the term. Like what the fuck? We only have two hours to do an exam, does he want to test us on how well we actually apply the knowledge or just our powers of derivation? Ugh.”

Pram hums and taps the back of his pen against the table thoughtfully. Korn twists so that he can see Pran better; he doesn’t usually respond to Korn’s whining.

“You said he allows cheat sheets?”

Korn frowns. “Only if they’re tattoos,” he reminds. “If you want to cheat here, you should be ready to cheat in life. He thinks he’s so funny.”

The corners of Pran’s lips twitch. “I meant, he put that in his syllabus?”

��Yes?” Korn wrinkles his nose. “Bolded and fourteen sized font and everything.”

Pran carefully doesn’t look at Korn. “Did you know that if you only ink the surface of your skin, a permanent tattoo will eventually fade and drain away?”

Korn stares at Pran. “What.”

Pran shrugs, still avoiding Korn’s incredulous stare. “You’d have it for a few months. Maybe up to half a year? But…temporary permanent tattoo.”

Korn straightens. He hasn’t blinked once this past minute.

“Amazing,” he breathes out with a wide smile, and Pran blushes. Awww. Then Korn frowns. “Do artists do temporary stuff like that? How much would it even cost?” Korn sticks his tongue out at the thought. “Maybe I should just do it myself…”

Pran snorts. “Absolutely don’t do that, your handwriting is atrocious. See if you can get a tattoo gun and we can do it at my place this weekend.”

Korn takes a second to process that. “You know how to give someone a tattoo?”

“I’ve done it a few times,” Pran says modestly.

“A- A few times? How? When?!”

Pran scoops up his markers. “I have to get to class.”

“I memorized your schedule, no you don’t.”

Pran ignores him. “My place, Saturday, after rugby practice. Bring lunch.”

“Pran.”

Pran makes a hasty retreat. “Text me if you can’t source a gun. Bye.”

“Pran.”

But he’s already gone and down the hall, Korn’s questions trailing behind him. Korn gets the feeling that something sudden and mysterious is going to pop up during tomorrow’s study session too, which means that if Korn wants to know more about Pran’s shady past, he’s going to have to either go through Pat or show up Saturday with hopes of the tattoo drawing out more information.

“Well played, Pran,” Korn murmurs as he pulls out his phone and pulls up machine listings, “Well played.”

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #93

“you better run, better run, outrun my gun.”

do you like your toes? no. people make fun of them because they are SOOO TINY. do you go to church? if so, do you actually pay attention?  i don't really go regularly, no, but when i do go, i pay attention. when you are home alone at night and hear strange noises, are you afraid someone is going to break in?  sometimes. i'm paranoid like that. do you want any tattoos? if so, where? i want lots. the only places off-limits to me is my face, my breasts (don't mistake that for sternum area), and probably my ass. are any of your friends virgins?  i'm aware at least one is, but it's not my business regardless. ever held a newborn animal? kittens, yes. can you name a single song by billy joel without looking it up? i can list multiple: "uptown girl," "moving out (anthony's song)," "piano man," etc... i grew up listening to billy joel 'cuz my dad loves him. do you wish life functioned more similarly to video games, such as having a save file that you could return to after you make a mistake & therefore you could erase that from happening & start over anew? huh. not sure, honestly... do you try to avoid burping in public, or are you open about it? after all, it is a normal bodily function. i try to do it quietly. have you ever refused to read / watch / listen to something simply because a lot of people really liked it? no, that's remarkably stupid. if you have a dog, are they friendly to strangers or other dogs? teddy loves new dogs and is initially apprehensive of strangers and will bark, but then starts crying excitedly lol. cali hates strangers in general. she won't bite or anything, but she'll growl and shake a lot. it takes a while for her to warm up to strangers. bentley just follows along with the other dogs. is it hard for you to get along with people that have different opinions than you? or can you ignore all of that stuff and be friends with just about anyone? it's honestly not hard for me at all, so long their opinions aren't just blatantly harmful. be honest, did "fifty shades of grey" arouse you in any way? never watched it, never will, because i'm not interested in watching a glorified porn. do you think you’d have what it takes to shoot someone if you had to protect yourself?   i know i'd have what it takes if i had no other choice. did you parents know what gender you were before you were born? i think, but i do know that i was initially thought to be a boy because my legs were always crossed in all the ultrasound pictures. i'm such a lady. :T do you have trouble reading small fonts?  depends on the font. roughly how hot are the summer temperatures where you reside? 90s, sometimes 100s. ew. do you find watching animals in their natural habitat to be exciting & fascinating?  YES. of all the decisions you have thus far made in your life, which was the best & which was the worst? best: going to holly hill; worst: rather not talk about. discarding the fact that they can smell & tend to get dirty a lot, do you like your feet, or feet in general? i absolutely loathe feet. they're just gross. do you have a favorite film, if so, what is it and why?  "alice in wonderland," tim burton's version. i just love that movie so much because it goes to show just how endless the imagination is. what was the last piercing you got? how much did it hurt? lip. and it hurt a lot, i mean, there's a needle jabbing through an extremely sensitive area. who was the last teacher to make a lasting impression on you? coach collie<3 that man is a saint. i wish i still had contact with him. would you breastfeed your child, if you ever had/have had one? probably? breast milk has so many more important nutrients. i'll never forget this diagram i saw at the hospital while ashley was having one of her kids and it showed just how much more nutrients breast milk has versus formula milk. but i don't want kids, so i'll never make that decision. have you ever slept naked?  no. i'd be way too uncomfortable. have you ever given someone oral sex? yes, and i don't like it. have you ever cuddled with someone that wasn’t a significant other? no. if you’re in a relationship, does cuddling with someone else count as cheating?  yes. when typing, what do you use to represent laughter [lol, ha, hehe, *giggle*, etc.]? lol or ha ha do you know how your parents met? if not, is that something you would want to know?  they met at work. do you ever roleplay? online on designated forums, yes. never in real life. have you ever seen the movie "matilda"? yes!! i love that movie!! do you have a poster of your favorite band/artist on your wall? metallica, yes. is your mall nice? NO. people being shot and fighting there aren't exactly uncommon. are you hard to handle? i'm mentally ill. obviously. have you ever had your eyebrows waxed?  yes. what color was the last bathing suit you wore? black. have you ever been to cracker barrel? yes. do you like your steak rare? medium well. how much younger or older would you date someone? i wouldn't date younger than 21, and i wouldn't date older than like 29. have you ever lived with a girlfriend/boyfriend?  yes. what’s your favorite book series?  it'll probably all be "warriors" by erin hunter. how can a person tell if you’re mad or annoyed? i mumble, scowl, and barely talk. and if i do, i speak as short sentences as possible. do you actually use the camera on your phone? NO. the camera on my phone is AWFUL. if i wanna ever take selfies, i use my old phoen. do you think it’s ignorant for people to have unprotected sex when they’re not ready for a child? obviously?? are there any specific piercings you would never, ever get done? eyebrow, smiley, nipples, and whatever the fuck that piercing is where your private gets pierced. i'm sure i'm forgetting others. what’s your favorite non-animated disney film? probably "a cinderella story" do you know anyone who had to have tubes put in their ears as a baby? yeah, me. were either of your parents baptized?  i don't know. mom, probably, since she was raised roman catholic. has anyone killed one of your pets before?  people have run over our cats before. do you have a push lawnmower or a riding lawnmower? we don't mow our own lawn, so we don't have one. we have a friend who does it. what is/are your pet[s] doing at this moment?  the dogs are sleeping and venus is curled up like a total cinnamon roll in her rock. describe the main problem with your last relationship? he wanted an extrovert, which i was unwilling to fake being. are you someone who has to hide the things you like around friends?  yes, i am totally that person. i get embarrassed about the things i enjoy, idk why. have you ever been to a porn website? were you addicted to it afterword?  no, and i never will. what is the most disgusting thing you think the opposite sex can do? be abusive. have you actually been through a devastating natural disaster before? multiple hurricanes. hurricane floyd was the worst. what fast food place, in your opinion, has the best french fries? bojangle's like yaaaas do you believe one day aliens might take over the planet earth? no, i don't. is it currently your favorite season? if not what is your favorite? no. my favorite's probably autumn, but winter almost ties it. do you like soda pop? if so, which is your favorite and least favorite? mountain dew's my fave, pepsi's probably the worst. do you have any siblings you’re embarrassed about being related to? no. i'm proud of my siblings. do you ever talk to people you met online through webcam? or is that weird? no. way too awkward. who was the last person you kissed and why did you kiss this person? tyler, and because i felt obligated to. is there a day you’d just like to forget? which one? the day i attempted suicide, the night jason broke up with me and the whole day afterward... when was the last time someone dumped you?  august or september of 2015. do you like dark chocolate or white more? what about milk chocolate? out of those two, i prefer dark because i hate white, but my favorite's milk. how many times have you seen star wars? be honest. i've never watched star wars. are you good at memorizing phone numbers? NO. i don't even know my own phone number. the only one i know is my mom's. have you ever made your own website? yep. do you like men who have a sensitive side? having a sensitive side is mandatory for me if you want me to like you at all. have you ever tried to get someone into a certain band/artist?  kinda indirectly. and it worked lmao be honest, does the person you like actually deserve you? or are they actually not worthy of your affections? it's more like idk if i deserve /him/ would you ever go on "fear factor"? no. would you ever wear black lipstick? do you know anyone who does? i do wear black lipstick if i ever do wear lipstick. would you rather be a successful writer or artist?  OHHHHHH now THAT'S a good question! i don't know! what is your favorite christmas movie? jim carrey's "how the grinch stole christmas" have you ever attended a religious or private school? does sunday school count? ever suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder?  yes. i think i'm fully recovered by now though. what is the shortest relationship you have ever had with someone?  less than 24 hours. do you like korn?  HEEEEEEEEEEEEEELL YEEEEEAAAAH when you were little, did you pick up worms? do you pick worms up now?  yes and no did you like the movie "finding nemo"? it was one of my favorites as a kid. i still love it. which part of your state/province do you live in [upper, lower, middle]? the east. when was the last time you went out of state? last summer for ashley's wedding. do you like paranormal stuff? YAAAAAAAAAAAAAS what letter does your surname begin with? "d" what is one food you couldn’t live without? pizza @-@ when you’re eating pizza do you add anything like crushed peppers, parmesan cheese or hot sauce to it? i used to always have it with hot sauce... i need to do that again, it was awesome. have you ever been able to pet a normally wild animal, like a tiger or dolphin?  i don't think so. where is your dad from? ohio where is your mom from? new york if you could find one long lost friend of the past, who would it be?  megan do you consider how you act online to be different than you act in person? in some areas, yes. i'm more open and excitable online. have you ever written a short story/novel? yes. do you believe in the paranormal or cryptids?  paranormal, yes, some cryptids. which dinosaur is your favorite?  spinosaurus! would you ever play with a ouija board?  no. i don't know if i believe they work, but i sure as hell don't wanna find out. which side of your family are you closest to? mom's would you want to work at the same place as your significant other? no. i personally need some space. would you rather die or eat another human being?  i'd rather die. is there anything that you and your friends simply can’t agree on? yes; most of my friends are liberal, and i'm more on the conservative side. but i don't even agree with some of my conservative friends because i'm not entirely conservative myself. who was the last person to comment on your facebook status? what does the comment say? i was hesitant to do so, but i updated on how i've been doing since my "incident" in february. i fucking scared everyone that day and wanted to let everyone know how great i've been doing. but anyway, it was my friend maria, and i don't remember off the top of my head, but she said a lot about how she loves me and that i'll always have god. she is SUCH a sweetheart, miss her<3 what are three reasons you’ve smiled or laughed most recently?  markiplier, rhett&link, and then probably pewdiepie. youtubers legitimately keep me going lol. think about your ex, your crush, or the person you’re currently dating. Were you attracted to that person as soon as you met them, or did the attraction develop over time? do you mean physically or mentally? physically, i actually thought he was kinda weird-looking but still attractive in some weird way, and mentally, i thought he was very interesting. which do you use the most, smiley faces, kisses or hearts?  various emoticons that are usually smiley faces of some sort. is there any kind of food or drink that you used to love, but now hate? sprite. it was my favorite soda. now i just don't like it. who is your favorite disney channel person?  raven symone, off the top of my head. what do you have pierced? ears, bottom lip when you take surveys, are your answers inspired by the person's before you? occasionally do you know any immigrants? yeah. do you know how to look after yourself away from home? (budget, pay pills, feed yourself, cook, clean, do laundry etc.) not really, to be totally honest... do you like dried fruit at all? what's your favorite type?  i hate dried fruit. where is the biggest window in your house? the living room. is there any song out there that just amazes you every time you hear it?  probably "fade to black" by metallica. the solo is so fucking amazing. do your pets spazz out a lot?  the dogs, especially teddy, bark at EVERYTHING does it bother you when people write "hai" instead of "hey", or are you one of those people?  no. i do it rarely. does your dad have any tattoos? no. how often does it snow where you are? does it interrupt your day-to-day life? like... once every other year or at least a little bit every year. and it almost never does. do you get really bad periods? if so, what do you do to make them less painful?  not anymore. they used to be horrendous before i went on the pill. but if i do cramp anyway, i use a heating pad and take advil. do you prefer zebra stripes, tiger stripes, or leopard spots? tiger stripes. have you ever held a snake?  many times. have you ever seen a volcano? no. have you ever met an alaskan? i've never actually *met* her, but i have a friend who's from alaska. she may still live there, i can't remember. did you ever play spyro? I STILL PLAY THAT SHIT BROTHER do you think mouse traps are wrong? the more inhumane ones, absolutely. who is your favorite fictional character?  pyramid head what's your favorite board/card game? board game, i guess clue, but i don't really like board games. card game, "magic: the gathering." have you met the last person you kissed’s parents? no. who is the first person you see in the mornings? always mom. she sleeps on the couch just outside my room. have you ever kissed anyone you weren’t dating? no. are you friends with your best friend’s boyfriend or girlfriend? i don't have a *best* friend, but i'll answer this question for the two people i'm closest with. one doesn't have a boyfriend, the other's married. her husband's cool. there’s a serial killer in your house, what do you do? climb out a window. can you commit to one person and one person only? yes, that's the only thing i want to do in regards to a relationship. i'm strictly monogamous. how many different colleges have you gone to? two do you believe it is possible for someone to change? i take two things daily and then another if i need it. are you a submissive person?  usually, very. do you believe everyone should learn another language while still a child? hmmm. maybe. how do you feel about tattoos and piercings?  love 'em. great form of expression. do you care what people think?  a bit too much. did you like kissing the last person you kissed or the one before that more? the one before by fucking eons is there anybody you think is hot over the age of 40? james hetfield, baby. yummy. are you embarrassed to buy condoms? i never have, but i'm not sure if i would be. probably not so long as i had other things with me. but i'd still most likely use self-checkout. have you ever picked wild flowers? yeah. have you ever seen a mountain in person?  yes<3 do you prefer jam or butter on your biscuits?  jelly have you ever explored somewhere abandoned?  yes. which season do you think is the prettiest? autumn have you ever found a four-leaf clover? yes. true story, we noticed a four-leaf clover patch in our front lawn the day after my father left the family. what's your favorite type of bird? barn owls when was the last time you made out with somebody? like a year and a half ago what month of the year was your mother born?  august what's your favorite type of bread? pumpernickel, yum. do you share a middle name with any of your siblings? yes. do you consider your goals easily achievable or are they pretty grand?  in-between, i guess? my main goal is to be a successful photographer, and photography is a veeeeeery competitive industry. did the last person you kissed have piercings? yep, lip piercings. do you believe that your first true love can be your only love in life? (s)he can be, sure. are your boobs real? yeah. is the last person you kissed mad at you?  most likely would you ever be a stripper?  under no circumstance. who was the last baby you held? ryder, my nephew. do you believe there's two sides to every story?  i mean sure. don’t you miss chuck e. cheese? of course. i loved that place. would you ever get a tattoo on your collar bone? i have one on my collar bone. what do you think of girls with huge boobs that don’t wear bras in public? i don't care if you have small or big boobs, wear a bra in public, please. do wasps scare you?  YEAH have you ever worn flipflops in the snow?  lol yes do you like the ends of bananas? i don't eat the end. have you tried playing cranium? yeah. i loved those games. what was the one where you were at a festival? that was my favorite. did you own a playground set when you were younger?  a swing and a slide. do you know how to use photoshop? only very minor things. how about sony vegas? yes. when people smoke around you, does it make you cough? yes. have you ever suspected your mom or dad of having an affair? not entirely. mom claims that dad cheated on her, but honestly? i doubt that very much. my mom lies about my dad a LOT. who was your most romantic moment with?  jason who does your most embarrassing moment involve?  jason. who is your oldest friend?  he's 30-ish. sam. your youngest?  17. chelsea. who have you known the longest?  that's still my friend? colleen or summer, not sure. what was your favorite tv show as a kid?  pokemon what do you think makes crop circles?  very bored people. what are you most known for?  being addicted to meerkats lol who's your favorite cousin?  i don't really have one, considering i'm not very close to any? but audrey or brenna are the ones closest regardless. what would you do in the event of an apocalypse? die, obviously? what teacher inspired you the most? how did they? coach collie. he was so wise and intelligent and caring. would you rather go fully blind or fully deaf? blind. i couldn't live in silence. what are your feelings on feminism? people tend to take it WAY too far. describe your first relationship?  it was puppy love. we were close friends and both thought it was more when it really wasn't. describe your last relationship?  a worthless endeavor. wanted to like him when i really didn't, and he proved why i didn't. name all the pets you’ve ever had. trigger (collie), angel (lab), teddy (beagle/cocker spaniel/collie), dale (cockapoo), harley (lab/pit), delilah (don't know what she was), cali (boxer), bentley (jack russel mix), charcoal (cat), eeyore (cat), aphrodite (cat), oreo (cat), chance (cat), bobbie (cat), cheshire (cat), loki (cat), lexi (cat), at the minimum like 30 other cats, squeak (guinea pig), snickers (guinea pig), harry potter (guinea pig), another guinea pig, eurydice (gerbil), another gerbil, rhoka (rat), tezzeret (rat), rhett (rat), link (rat), mona lisa (ball python), cato (ball python), venus (ball python), shadow (chinese water dragon), and i'm sure i'm forgetting some... we've just had sooo many pets. do you put posters on your bedroom walls? my walls are covered in posters and drawings. has anyone ever told you that you’re a good singer?  yeah, but i'm not. do you have a lot of hair on your arms? or none at all?  i guess i have a normal amount. what would you do if you were stuck on a boat in the middle of the ocean? oh my god. i've no idea. probably just wait until i starve to death if there was no way to contact anyone. would you ever sell your soul?  no. what was your class song when you graduated? that stupid fucking "this is how we roll" song because i went to school with a bunch of rednecks. what's the scariest living animal that you've petted? rose-haired tarantula. do you brush your tongue with your toothbrush? of course what do you order at chik-fil-a? just the chicken sandwich. soooo good, are you a good kisser? supposedly. do you like 80’s music?  '80s metal, hell yeah. what kind of music are your parents into? mom, heavy metal, dad, classic rock cupcakes or muffins?  hmmm. muffins, maybe. do you prefer the beatles or the rolling stones? the stones do you prefer candles or incense?  incense which fictional villain is your favorite?  harley quinn what nationality is your last name?  scottish do you think trenchcoats are attractive on guys?  hell yeah did you rollerblade as a kid? do you still rollerblade? dude i was a boss rollerblader as a kid. i haven't been in a long time though. when was the last time you drank strawberry milk? all the way back in elementary school when i tried it for the first time. it was fucking awful. never had it again. do you own a pair of fingerless gloves?  i have multiple from my high school days. which of britney spears’ songs is your favorite?  "toxic" is a classic which did you have taken out last, your tonsils, appendix, or your wisdom teeth?  i still have all those. is your father homophobic?  i actually don't know. pencil or liquid eyeliner? pencil. i can't do liquid. have you ever applied make-up on a guy, for any reason at all? ha ha ha yes. i gave jason a makeover once. do you like any of the songs on "twilight," or the actual movie/saga itself?  for some reason, i specifically remember my little sister watching one of the movies on christmas one year and i remember "supermassive black hole" by muse was on there. i love that song. would you rather learn more about space or more about the ocean? space. do you have a mental illness? if yes, how have you learned to cope with it? if no, do you ever suspect you may have one? i have chronic depression, severe anxiety, either bipolar ii or bpd, plus i'm pretty much recovered from ptsd. and honestly, the main reason i'm able to cope with it all is because i'm properly medicated. but also deep breathing is a life saver. also continuously trying to think logically is very important. have you ever been tempted to start life over somewhere else? yeah. mom once contemplated letting me live with my cousins in new york when i was still really bad after the break-up, but i didn't want to. do you have a favorite character from the avengers?  loki and thor. do you like sprinkles on your ice cream? noooo. i don't like sprinkles. honestly, have you ever crashed a party before? no. which subject are you better at - science or history?  science do you know how much you weighed at birth? how much?  six or seven pounds, don't remember which. what noise does your favorite animal make?   they bark, chirp, etc. they make a lot of noises. do you like turtles, fishies, or frogs more?  hmmm. fish or frogs. choose: skygazing, or stargazing? ['skygazing', as in clouds, etc] stargazing, i assume. are you modest? i.e changing in front of others, etc? very, honestly. would ever go skydiving? what about bungee jumping? probably not, honestly. i'd be too scared of something going wrong. do you like breadsticks or dinner rolls better? why?  breadsticks, and because i just do? do you find it odd when males wear make-up and other such things?  no. do you curse in average conversations?  depends on the person i'm talking to. red, white, yellow, or pink roses? i like the pink ones that also have a peach gradient. do you ever wear colored eye liner? no. are you embarrassed about your sex life or lack thereof? no. have you ever seen a shooting star? i believe so. i've also seen a star explode! are you a comic book geek?  nope. do you think if someone is in a relationship, that it is acceptable to have sleepovers with other people of their preferred sex? honestly, no. that just sounds... weird. does the majority of the music you listen to have a lot of cursing or very little? what about when you were younger, did your parents approve of you listening to music with explicit or vulgar lyrics? some, but definitely not the majority. and mom didn't let my sisters and me listen to explicit stuff. for those who have anxiety, has anyone ever told you that you just need to calm down and actually face your fears? were you insulted or frustrated by this comment? oh, i've heard it more times than i've heard my own name. and i get both insulted and frustrated. it's ignorant as fuck to say that. what is your favorite song by coldplay? "clocks" is there something that you thought you would’ve outgrown/gotten over by now, but haven’t? forum role-play. what is your state’s largest city? raleigh, probably? maybe charlotte? do you listen to rise against?  not actively. i love their song "re-education through labor," though. have you ever taken care of a newborn baby? no, thankfully. did you play in the sand box as a kid? true shit, i created a trend of digging tunnels in the sandbox at school lmao. have you ever taken another person’s prescribed medication?   yes. pain medication. what’s important about april?  my sister's and dad's birthday are in april. would you be surprised if your parents had another baby together? well yeah, my mom's past menopause and she's also divorced to my dad... would you consider adoption?  i don't want kids. but if i did, i think i'd be more likely to adopt like a pre-teen. what’s the largest animal you’ve ever had as a pet?  a lab/pit mix. do you ever put fruit on your cereal?  ew, no. how do you usually celebrate your favorite holiday? not really with anything. :( i don't have the money for costumes. we do decorate the house, though, and carve pumpkins, but that's not usually on halloween day. do you think age matters in friendship? no. i have a close friend who's 30 and he is like my brother. are you more likely to eat when you’re bored or depressed?  depressed. do all of your exes share the same eye color?  yes. have you ever been on a ferris wheel?  yeah! are you an organ donor? yes. what would you name your pet snake if you had one?  i do have a pet snake, and her name is venus. do you like peanuts?  no.  i hate nuts. when was the last time you absolutely could not hold back your tears and broke down in a place you didn’t want to?   i'm not sure. how many tim burton movies have you seen? what do you think of his movies/animation style?   oh my, i've seen a lot.  and i adore his style; he's my favorite director. have you ever met someone who was truly insane?   at mental hospitals, yes. does anyone in your family have a serious mental illness?   my half-sister is schizophrenic. do you think you could handle having an autistic or mentally disabled child?   i don't think i could handle a kid to begin with. ever been homeless?   no, thankfully.  well, we were evicted once and i had no "permanent" house at the time, but thank god colleen let me stay with her. if you were given the chance to go scuba diving, would you?  YES! have you ever seen a live seahorse?  in aquariums, yeah.  i love seahorses. (: what color did you first ever dye your hair?   i got purple highlights. is it rare for you to feel embarrassed?   not at all.  i am like constantly embarrassed about everything. is there a website you visit regularly because it's funny/amusing?  facebook.  i go on there more for the memes than keeping up with friends lmao what’s your favorite kind of cap’n crunch?  the one that's all berries.  damn, now i want some. do you get upset when a dog jumps on you?   not "upset," but i don't enjoy it. are your bras all simple/plain or do you like having funky/colored bras? if you're a guy, do you like how girls look in bras?   i don't like plain bras.  mine have to have at least some kind of design and preferably texture. what’s the scariest thing that’s happened to you?   something i'm pretty convinced was paranormal.  i was home alone, trying to go to sleep, and my dog teddy was seriously on edge.  then he randomly jerked his head up from where he was lying beside me and started barking his head off, staring at the foot of the bed.  i'd been feeling weird all night and was fucking horrified; i tried to pull teddy's head back down because him staring with his fur raised was really scaring me, but he refused to lie his head back down.  i was fucking shaking.  he finally stopped long enough for me to call my mom almost crying.  she got our neighbor to come sleep at the house with me (my family was away at a dance competition).  and mind you, it was like, 3 am, so i was fucking terrified to the point where i was fine with waking my poor neighbor up about it.  she was very, very sweet about it, though. has an ambulance ever came to your house?  maybe?  i'm not sure, we may have needed to call when ashley had one of her episodes... ever owned a turtle?   yeah, briefly. do you like paramore?  they're okay. do you think mice are cute?   YES! is there a particular fruit that you dislike? which?   i don't like cantaloupe or pears. what's your favorite birth stone?  rubies! do you like pomegranates?  YAAAAAS as a pet, would you rather have a gecko or a turtle?   gecko! did you ever own a gameboy color? if so, what color was yours?  yes.  red. if you were going to go to the movies today, what would you want to see?  is "baywatch" out yet?  it looks funny. if you had the power to control any one of the elements, which would it be?  does darkness count?  if not, fire. at what age do you consider people to be old?   70 do you ever wear chokers?   i did in high school.  don't know if mine still fit me, though.  haven't had a reason to wear one. do bees scare you?  not bumblebees or honeybees, but like wasps and hornets, fuck yeah. do you prefer margaritas or martinis?  i've only tried margaritas, which i love. what's your favorite song by the killers?   "mr. brightside" which owl city song is your favorite?  "hot air balloon," probably. what birds do you commonly see in your town/city/province?   crows, sparrows, robins, blue jays, etc... have you ever had a tonsil stone?  no.

[teachanarchy]

“I think the computers have complicated lives very greatly. The whole, you know, age of computer, has made it where nobody knows exactly what’s going on.”

—Donald Trump, Dec. 29, 2016

The night of Donald Trump’s electoral victory, as journalists and pollsters sat stunned, alt-right trolls on the online imageboard 4chan were declaring ecstatic victory. The election outcome was, for them, the culmination of a long-orchestrated campaign they had dubbed “The Great Meme Wars.” “Will we ever experience something this great again?” an anonymous poster wrote on the site’s “politically incorrect” imageboard, the post accompanied by a twist on one of the site’s more popular characters, Wojak, the character’s MS Paint-rendered visage outfitted in Nazi SS gear. “The meme wars of 2015/2016 are over and we are the winners.”

Who were these self-declared winners? A bizarre allegiance of online trolls, experts at manufacturing memes—the jokey, absurdist images, often overlaid with text, that are copied and spread endlessly with slight variations by people online. Through memes and the clandestine net spaces they used to share them, these trolls met and formed a Frankenstein political bloc out of adult My Little Pony fans, furries, anime enthusiasts, self-described “masculinists,” disgruntled video gamers, Neo-Nazis, white nationalists, xenophobes, neo-monarchists, reactionaries, old-school racists, and nihilists in search of edgy lols. They were coronated the “alt-right” by white nationalist “leader” Richard Spencer, and referred to Trump as “God Emperor” on Reddit, where they made the r/The_Donald forum into one of the most popular on the hugely popular news and web content aggregation site.

As trivial as it may seem, The Great Meme Wars and the chaos it wrought on social media likely had a very real effect on the 2016 election. By weaponizing their memes, berating their targets with aggressive rhetorical strategies, and generally acting as outrageously as possible, the so-called alt-right gained the acknowledgement of both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, hijacked the mainstream media, and dragged the national Overton Window toward their extremist views in the process—all from the safely removed distance of their crusty keyboards.

They may have won the battle, but according to their opposition—some of which is located in the Northwest—the Great Meme Wars are far from over.

“I try to clean up messes, but I also try to create them,” a woman named Addy says over the phone as she prepares to relocate from her lifelong home in the Midwest to the Northwest, where she says she will be “safer.” The line goes silent for a moment—the sound of distant gulping and a staticky video barking something about counter-terrorist operations in the background. “I’ve got to tell you something real quick as I chug my Mountain Dew, because yes, I’m a memer. I’m not the alt-right, but I still drink Mountain Dew. Anyways, yeah, I actually consider myself more of a ‘social hacker’ than a memer. Every hacker is either addicted to chaos or addicted to order. I myself am addicted to chaos, but I’m chaotic good.”

Before she came out as a trans woman, Addy (who asked Seattle Weekly to withhold her last name) spent a lot of time on 4chan and took part in the same early troll culture that would, many years later, form the alt-right. “I was the embodiment of 4chan,” she says. “I would say anything just to get a rise, do anything just to get a rise. I don’t even feel comfortable talking about the person I used to be.” Then something changed. Addy’s sibling married a black woman; along came two new black nieces; and soon Addy had a biracial child of her own. “I started realizing I was a racist, a sexist, all these things. It wasn’t hard to admit that—it was empowering to admit that, because once I did, I could destroy it. I’ve been on a warpath ever since.”

She left 4chan and began spending more time in another meme-making community she found on Facebook. There she would start her own page to distribute her own memes. She named the page Lettuce Dog and adopted a logo that is, indeed, a head of lettuce fashioned to look like a dog. Just a month after Addy began Lettuce Dog, in the fall of 2015, she had amassed 9,000 followers. Today, roughly a year, four months, and 1,700 memes later, that number has grown to 93,000. On a decent week, Lettuce Dog’s memes will reach 1 to 3 million people using the same troll tactics Addy learned from 4chan and often sparking fierce political debate in the comments.

Take one simple meme she made in November. Featuring a stock photo of two Jet Ski riders carving through ocean waves, a message is written in goofy blue font: “It’s time to get EXTREME about destroying white supremacy.” The nonsensical image was liked by 2,100 people, shared over a thousand times, and resulted in conversations between Addy and upset commenters about white guilt and the definitions of racism and white supremacy.

According to Addy, when she began Lettuce Dog on Facebook, there were only two types of meme pages. “There were really stuffy, obnoxious social-justice-warrior pages—completely humorless, very angry white allies complaining about things,” she says. On the flipside there were “dank” meme pages—pages that “were on so many layers of irony, just totally out there, playing with the human mind.” With Lettuce Dog, Addy had decided to combine the two forms and create what is likely the first “dank social-justice page.” Countless others followed the same path until dank social-justice pages constituted their own subculture, known as “Weird Facebook.” As a collective, these pages reach somewhere in the tens of millions.

While plenty of Weird Facebook pages are largely apolitical, the community overall tends to have a far-left bent—its memes are often anti-capitalist, fiercely pro-LGBTQ, social-justice oriented, and sit on a spectrum that ranges from anarchist, Democratic socialist, socialist, and Marxist to full-on communist. Collectivism is a central tenet of Weird Facebook. “Individualism is terrible and inevitably going to die,” says Addy, who self-identifies as an “anarcho-collectivist,” but isn’t shy about espousing explicitly communist values and ideas in her memes.

Via Lettuce Dog

Weird Facebook content creators typically don’t care to take credit for their work, preferring to remain anonymous while posting to pages with names like “Gangster Popeye,” “G a Y L O R M O O N S a Y S” or “I play KORN to my DMT plants, smoke blunts all day & do sex stuff.”

The community is also structured in a collectivist framework—they don’t compete, but share each other’s content freely, cooperating in an effort to drive fans to each other’s pages and help grow each others’ audiences. They do this because memes live and die by the masses, their strength and potency directly tied to how many people are engaging with them rather than the prestige of any individual creator.

By their very nature, memes represent a violation of traditional notions of “ownership.” Everything from trademarked intellectual properties, pop-culture detritus, watermarked stock photos, random cyber-garbage off Google images, and AP news photos to the very structure of past memes themselves are on the table for endless remixing by the masses who share them and participate in their creation. As a result, “normies,” as meme-culture outsiders are called, might not even be able, at first glance, to decode a meme—the result of a cascading, mutating series of Dadaist in-jokes and symbols whose agreed meanings that, while somewhat fixed, are also incredibly fluid, largely guided by their makers’ intuition rather than any logical plan.

“When you log into the Internet, you’re plugging your brain into millions, billions of other brains,” Addy says. “The Internet is a giant brain, just like a neural network.” She claims her most popular memes have come to her in visions not unlike those of religious mystics. “Sometimes I feel like the Internet wills me to make certain memes, like I’m plugged directly into the zeitgeist.”

Addy isn’t the only meme-maker at Lettuce Dog. Like most of the other Weird Facebook pages, hers has a decentralized structure with a number of administrators, a collaborative practice that results, often intentionally, in a more diverse array of voices.

Although it’s impossible to know the racial or gender makeup of the alt-right or trolls in general due to their anonymity, researcher Whitney Phillips, who spent six years infiltrating, observing, and interacting in troll spaces for her 2015 book This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship Between Online Trolling Culture and Mainstream Media, notes that “what is empirically verifiable, however, is the observable fact that trolling behaviors are gendered male, are raced as white, and are dependent upon a certain degree of economic privilege.” Alt-right politics, while all over the place, hinge largely on white identity politics—thus the opposition on Weird Facebook often relies on and prides itself on its rainbow coalition of counter-trolls to fight those same tactics.

Via Cory in the Abyss

In addition to Addy, a white trans woman, Lettuce Dog’s three other contributors are a digital artist (a white cis-woman), an Instagram manager (a white cis-man), and a black meme-maker named Cory in the Abyss, who runs his own Weird Facebook page as well.

After admiring each other’s memes and their shared politics, Addy reached out to Cory and asked if he would join the Lettuce Dog team as a writer/content-creator, agreeing to cross-post his page’s memes to hers as payment. “It’s a really intersectional process,” Cory tells me. “I’m not up on trans issues, so Addy kind of makes trans issues more visible for me. On the other hand, I help her see race issues in a way a white person might not see them. So we compliment each other’s shortcomings politically, but it’s all propelled generally in that same far-left direction.”

Via Lettuce Dog

Cory started making memes after growing frustrated with his original arts medium of choice: poetry. “I felt frustrated with its ivory-tower elitism,” he says. “With a poem, you might get published in a journal, and then a few people in academia might read it. When I make a meme, I post it, and almost right away it reaches thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of people. It’s immediate, and honestly, probably the most pragmatic way to reach people now.”

Via Cory in the Abyss

Another Weird Facebook page called Eses Be Wilin was born of a similar spirit. “A friend of mine from central California started the page, and I asked to join as an admin when it had maybe 100 likes,” Jorge Bustamante (who asked Seattle Weekly not to use his real name), tells me from his Seattle home. A “Latinx ghetto cultural empowerment” page, it has amassed 27,000 followers in the year it’s been up. “Eses Be Wilin started in the midst of the Trump campaign—I got involved because I feel like Latin American oppression arises every election cycle, and I wanted to show that what many might perceive as the bottom of the barrel of Latin culture is actually a very rich culture. There’s a lot of Chicano pride pages on Facebook, but we were the first to bring meme-ing to that culture and that audience, which is why I think the page took off so quickly.”

Bustamante and his friend began with a central-Californian Chicano cultural focus, but they quickly added a Dominican admin, a Puerto Rican admin, and a Guatemalan admin in an effort to represent the wider Latin American experience. Like Lettuce Dog, Eses Be Wilin peddles primarily absurdist-humor memes, but sprinkles in memes with political, resistance-oriented motifs as well—memes that address Western imperialism, colonialism, police violence, the Zapatista movement, and the United Farm Workers movement.

Though Trump was the main reason Bustamante felt prompted to make memes about Latinx culture, he chose the form as his medium for a separate reason—declining faith in mainstream media’s issues coverage. “One [outlet] I stopped following recently is CNN,” he says. “I used to read them every day, but I haven’t in months because during the election cycle, the front of their website every day was some inconsequential shit regarding e-mail scandals or some mean thing Donald Trump said. That was it, just the same shit back and forth. There was nothing to learn at that point—I started to feel like real news was becoming inaccessible. I think that’s why a lot of people are turning to memes.”

Media analyst Andrew Tyndall released a report on Oct. 26 noting that from the beginning of 2016 to the time of its publication, ABC’s World News Tonight, the CBS Evening News and the NBC Nightly News had devoted a mere 32 minutes total to issues coverage—defined by Tyndall as coverage which “takes a public policy, outlines the societal problem that needs to be addressed, describes the candidates’ platform positions and proposed solutions, and evaluates their efficacy.”

What dominated instead? The endlessly controversial exploits of Donald Trump, who earned 327 minutes of coverage, a third of the year’s total airtime, and “more than the entire Democratic race combined.” Tyndall’s report focused on only three major broadcast news programs, but Donald Trump’s stranglehold on the media’s attention across the board—print journalism, web journalism, blogs, television, radio, mainstream media, independent media, alternative media—and the corresponding lack of substantive issues coverage were observable to anyone who consumed any kind of news this past year.

In her book, Phillips proposes a somewhat radical thesis about the media and trolls. The trolls who lurk on Facebook, Reddit, 4chan, and Twitter spewing vile racist, xenophobic, and misogynistic transgressions—the ones the media consistently deride as societal outsiders—actually fit very neatly into the contemporary cultural landscape. In fact, they simply mirror the methodologies of a mainstream media that thrives on controversy. “Not only do these outlets give trolls precisely what they want—specifically, a national platform—they validate the impulse to troll,” Phillips writes. “As sensationalist media have proven again and again, these behaviors work, and not just for trolls. The behaviors also work for mainstream media companies, since stories about trolling translate into page views, and page views translate into advertising revenue, and advertising revenue is the lifeblood of any successful media organization.”

Trump laid out his understanding of this very phenomenon—albeit in its analog form—three decades ago in his memoir The Art of the Deal: “One thing I’ve learned about the press is that they’re always hungry for a good story, and the more sensational the better. The point is that if you are a little different, or a little outrageous, or if you do things that are bold or controversial, the press is going to write about you.”

In fact, many in the alt-right refer to The Art of the Deal as The Art of the Troll.

Trolls hit the big time—with assistance from the media—on Sept. 12, when hillaryclinton.com published an article with the subhead “That cartoon frog is more sinister than you realize.” The frog in question was Pepe—who began his life in Matt Furie’s Boy’s Club comic series from the mid-2000s, a collection of which was published last year by Seattle publisher Fantagraphics. The comics follow the stoneriffic adventures of four anthropomorphic animal roommates. In one comic from 2008, Pepe is caught peeing with his pants all the way down. When confronted by his roommate about it, he responds, “feels good man.” Pepe’s smiling frog head, with the words “feels good man,” became an innocent icon on the Internet and a fixture of early meme culture, endlessly remixed onto countless bodies expressing a range of emotions (“feels bad man”).

But on 4chan, Twitter, and r/the_donald, an army of “alt-right” trolls began churning out an incredibly high volume of incendiary “smug” Pepes (Pepe smirking with his hand on his chin). Some were simply of green, Pepe-fied Trumps or Pepes wearing red “Make America Great Again” hats, which Donald Trump and Trump Jr. both retweeted. But many more were Nazi Pepes—Pepe as Hitler, Pepe as SS officer, Pepe holding guns to the heads of minorities and women, and Jew Pepes, drawn in the style of anti-Semitic WWII propaganda posters.

With the help of Pepe’s cartoon grin, the alt-right was winning.

“For the past year and a half, they destroyed us in memes,” Bustamante says. “They beat everyone in memes this past election—they made so many, they made more than us, they made so many effective ones. They were better content creators. It doesn’t matter if they’re politically inept or living in their mom’s basement, what matters is they’re outwardly expressing this train of thought, bringing together people with vaguely similar interests to congregate in the same space on the Internet.”

The sheer volume of these memes yielded real results—the unparalleled level of activity most evident in the engagement on r/the_donald. Thanks to Reddit’s algorithm, the questionable content at play on that subreddit was thrust to the front page. The domination was so intense that Reddit decided to change the algorithm on June 15 in an attempt to present its general users with some semblance of variety.

All of this, of course, was “just about having fun,” as alt-right media platform Breitbart wrote in March. Then Clinton declared that Pepe the frog was a white nationalist symbol, akin to a swastika. In one fell swoop, she both legitimized a band of trolls and officially handed it sole ownership of a powerful meme. “Everything has been weird since the day Hillary talked about Pepe,” Bustamante says. “I think that was a very dark time for memes. From that point on, everything the alt-right did was validated.”

Two weeks later, the Anti-Defamation League officially filed Pepe the frog as a hate symbol. The alt-right were thrilled at the “triggered” media. The Hill, Vanity Fair, Talking Points Memo, CNN, The Economist, MSNBC, and countless others took the bait, drawn to the story’s literal cartoonish extremes. Suddenly swastikas were everywhere, and the alt-right, previously a fringe web group, was a household name.

The coup, in turn, further revealed the increasingly low bar of mainstream media coverage. In one instance, Chris Matthews on MSNBC exclaimed that “the green guy there has become a popular symbol of white nationalism—I didn’t know this! I’m learning! […] I know none of this stuff! But I now know it. I just learned it today,” admitting his lack of knowledge and context of the meme in a rush to brand it a hate symbol. The first article that comes up in a Google search of Pepe, a Los Angeles Times article on Pepe as a hate symbol, doesn’t even get the name of Furie’s comic correct, calling it Boy’s Life, similarly exhibiting a lack of real knowledge or insight while simultaneously handing its ownership to the alt-right. Following the newfound legitimization, white nationalist Richard Spencer seized a media spotlight and became a “spokesperson” for the “movement,” which until then had been little more than an online mob.

Soon after the Pepe episode, it was revealed in The Daily Beast that Palmer Luckey, the almost-billionaire creator of the Oculus Rift virtual-reality headset, which is Facebook-owned and has offices in Seattle, was the secret backer of a pro-Trump, anti-Hillary “meme magic” nonprofit campaign called Nimble America which filed for a 501(c)(4) in September. Inspired by the success of the provocative Pepes, Luckey sought to fund a group of meme-making trolls he was in contact with so they could churn similar content out on social media full-time. Posting on r/the_donald as “NimbleRichMan,” Luckey wrote “we’ve proven that shitposting is powerful and meme magic is real. So many of you have asked us, how we can bring this to real life,” promising to match donations to the upstart meme organization dollar for dollar.

“There’s all this ‘fake news’ now,” Cory in the Abyss says, “and in a way we’re also ‘fake.’ The difference is, with our memes, we have an agenda, and there’s no pretense about those agendas. The exciting thing about memes now is that we’ve kind of become like pirate news—we don’t represent an institution or an establishment. The left can troll too.”

While the alt-right may have outpaced the left in the first battle of the Great Meme Wars, Weird Facebook has seemingly become the most formidable, viable challenger to the movement’s nihilistic, irony-drenched tactics. Many collectivist memers revel in the historical precedent the communist Soviet Union set on the Eastern front in WWII when defeating the Nazis’ fascist empire—images from which admins of Weird Facebook often weaponize as memes in their own battles against the alt-right. But as Phillips wonders in her book, if “certain forms of trolling can be justified, is the righteousness of a particular act compromised if it replicates precisely the cultural logics it seeks to dismantle?”

According to Lettuce Dog, the answer is a firm yes. “So, remember, I’m chaotic good,” she says. “Trump and the alt-right are chaotic too—chaotic evil.”

For Addy, a core value separates Weird Facebook’s trolling tactics from that of the alt-right’s. “I’ll intentionally make a meme that I know will stir a lot of controversy and anger a lot of people,” she says, “but with the express purpose of empowering marginalized people.” Early on, when Lettuce Dog was first gaining in popularity, Addy posted a meme that began to get “tons of shares.” Although the meme was well-intentioned, as most of hers are, when a Mexican man reached out and explained to Addy why he thought the meme was offensive, she had to make a fateful decision: “Should I be a white asshole, tell him to shut up, and keep the successful meme rolling? Or should I not be a prick, and make another that’s less offensive?”

The answer wasn’t obvious at first. Her time in the extreme, taboo-breaking culture of 4chan had trained Addy to place edginess above all else. But she decided she was done with that. “I deleted it, apologized to him, and have continued to run my page that way,” she says. “Now with the Internet, we’re all sharing one collective mind, so to hurt any part of that collective is to hurt the whole collective—to harm me. The 13-year-olds typing the n-word on YouTube don’t understand how much they’re hurting themselves.”

The alt-right is seemingly of a different mind when it comes to such empathy. Yet there is another area where Addy and her fellow memers hope to replicate their enemies: how to harness memes to hijack the media, use it against itself, and seize a national platform for their politics. “We don’t want to be edgy in a troll-comment way,” says Lettuce Dog admin Cory, “but edgy in that our memes stand on the edge of many different seams, make you think, and hopefully push you towards a better ideology. I think they’re the cultural foundation—the memes are the pre-body politic.”

And indeed, the loletariat did begin to rise just this past weekend. The Meme Wars took a decidedly sweet turn for Weird Facebook on Inauguration Day, when alt-right “leader” Richard Spencer was caught on camera during an interview getting punched in the face by a masked member of a black bloc. In an act of “meme magic,” the punch landed right as Spencer was beginning to explain the enamel pin on his lapel— “It’s Pepe, he’s become kind of a symbol … ” Smack!

In less than 24 hours, the clip had been remixed hundreds of times and shared by millions. In various iterations of the clip, the audible thud of the punch synched to the snare hits in “Born in the USA,” “Blue Monday,” and others. Still images of the violence were Photoshopped alongside images of Captain America and Indiana Jones punching Nazis, an activity memers presented as “American as apple pie.” “I’m afraid this is going to become the meme to end all memes,” Spencer later said on Periscope. “That I’m going to hate watching this.”

“I think what we’re going to see now is a lot more anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist, anti-fascist content creation,” Bustamante says. “While people with those trains of thought have always been underrepresented under the neoliberal U.S. government and the media, I think approaching this far different flipside, being the alt-right and Trump, we’re going to be the new fighters in terms of content creation—primarily through memes at this time.”

Bustamante’s one reservation is Facebook’s own algorithm—which itself caught flack last summer for its seemingly arbitrary censorship of “inappropriate” memes and the pages that host them. The flashpoint for the criticism was a popular meme featuring a photo of a goose whose head appeared to be on fire—in reality, it was simply an illusion, created by a campfire in the background. Regardless, Facebook censored the meme, deeming it “graphic content.” Many follow-up memes highlighted the absurdity that mainstream-media images of bloodied Syrian children and the bodies of drowned refugees were allowed on the site, but this goose with a fake flaming head wasn’t. A 100-page strong “Meme Alliance” emerged to challenge Facebook’s policy and the algorithm.

Yet even without the alliance, it seems foolish to think Facebook could ever truly quash the flow of memes. Thanks to the masses, and Weird Facebook’s leaderless, collectivist structure, the memes will always find a way. But if there comes a need to go further underground, Addy, for one, has an idea.

“We need to start a hacktivist group called Unanimous,” she says, “and all wear Guy Fieri masks.”

ksears@seattleweekly.com