Praise Kek: are memes spawning a new religion?
What is Kek? Was Kek really an ancient Egyptian god, or just another dumb online joke that got way out of hand? What can the rise of Kek tell us about the formation of religions, and the struggles of young men in the modern world?
Memes mean different things for different people. They perform a wide variety of functions. They can be used to flirt, or convey information to friends in a lighthearted, jokey way. That’s all good and positive.
However, there are other, more negative manifestations of meme culture. At its most benign, this manifestation can be interpreted as classic in group/out group division, or cliqueyness. The meme, or code word, that my group use, is ours, and you’re not supposed to know what it is. There’s a word for that, actually:
One especially important shibboleth that’s emerged over the past decade or so, and gained rather a lot of currency with people who don’t particularly mind being referred to as ‘alt-right’, is… Kek.
WHAT IS KEK?
The thing about people who don’t mind being referred to as alt-right, is that they’re often gamers. No judgment here. We’re all gamers.
As you may know, if you play World Of Warcraft, your opponents communications are scrambled. Such that if your rivals type the common phrase (it’s technically a meme in itself, actually) ‘lol’ it gets scrambled and comes up as ‘kek’.
‘Kek’ is Korean, kinda, for ‘lol’. As in, the Korean the onomatopoeia for laughing is ㅋㅋㅋ, in which ㅋ is (to western ears) a ‘k’ sound.
So immediately ‘kek’ became, for gamers, one of those fun in-group, out-group symbols. A shibboleth! Some enterprising dweeb googled Kek, and what do you know, Kek also happens to be the name of an ancient Egyptian chaos god, who also happened to have the head of a frog.
All this coincided with the rise of Trump, and the adoption of Pepe the frog as an unofficial mascot of the alt-right…. And the coincidence almost seemed too good to be true.
KEK MEME
Never mind the fact that original googler misread the history, and ‘Heket’ is actually a female god of fertility. In hieroglyph form, ‘Kek’ appears to be using a computer! A deity from the ancient world that anticipated the rise of keyboard warriors!
Is this satire? A bit, maybe. Poe’s Law – which essentially states ‘it’s impossible to tell if somebody on the internet is joking’ – is worth bringing up here.
But even if some, or most, of the people claiming to worship at the shrine of the Almighty Lord of Chaos Kek, some will certainly take it seriously.
There’s never been a shortage of young men who consider themselves intellectuals – free-thinkers, apart from the common ‘normie’ herd. These pseudo-brainiacs, unimpressed with traditional religion, alienated from their families and communities, are naturally drawn to these in-groups. Proto-religions, where the answers are easy, and you’re part of a club.
It’s a tribal marker, perfectly in tune with the self-serving nihilism most young men flirt with at some point in their lives.
And just like a religion, it’s spawning its own rituals. Get a load of this, a kind of ‘Kekistani Lord’s Prayer’.
Our Kek who art in memetics
Hallowed by thy memes
Thy Trumpdom come
Thy will be done
In real life as it is on /pol/
Give us this day our daily dubs
And forgive us of our baiting
As we forgive those who bait against us
And lead us not into cuckoldry
But deliver us from shills
For thine is the memetic kingdom, and the shitposting, and the winning, for ever and ever.
KEK FLAG
The flag of Kekistan even looks a bit like a swastika (right?)
And if you’re about to leave a smooth-brain comment along the lines of ‘dude, 2015 called, they want their article back’ then consider this – the flag of Kek was seen fluttering proudly above the raging mass during the Jan 6 insurrection.
Not good enought? Less than a year ago, before the Buffalo shootings, the gunman explicitly posted a bunch of crazy Kekky stuff:
‘I learned through infographics, shitposts, and memes that the White race is dying out, that blacks are disproportionately killing Whites, that the average black takes $700,000 from tax-payers in their lifetime, and that the Jews and the elite were behind this’.
They’re still out there, of course. Young men, rootless and hungry for meaning, reaching back to the distant past, the ancient world – the old magic – to give them purpose and a reason to live.
Meanwhile Kek, or at least his froggy emissary Pepe, lurk in the reeds of popular discourse, waiting for the next election to respawn.
Standing on a grim – yet nevertheless compelling – platform of hop and change.
