It happened with a phrase, perhaps as clear a phrase as could be conceived at the time, when usurped from the vocabulary and untethered from its definition. The phrase was “sex discrimination,” and by concerted use, it’s claimed to be ambiguous.  All it required was for people to seize it and use it for their own purposes.

Now it’s Pepe the Frog.

This is Pepe the Frog. He’s a laid-back amphibious dude whose hobbies include hanging out with his roommates, getting stoned, drinking pop, eating pizza and watching TV. He doesn’t get out much and spends the majority of his time slinging outdated ‘90s clapbacks at his fellow dude-bros.

You might be surprised, then, to hear that Pepe was recently designated a “hate symbol” by the Anti-Defamation League. Talk about not chill.

You don’t care about Pepe? Frankly, neither do I. It’s not a meme of any significance in my world, and had this not happened, chances are slim that it would ever be mentioned here. But this isn’t about Pepe the Frog. Not really.

The slack-jawed frog was originally created by artist Matt Furie in 2005 as part of the zine “Boy’s Club.” The comic revolves around the absurd, marijuana-fueled antics of Pepe and his crew ― Andy, Brett and Landwolf. A typical evening for the 20-something slackers of various species would include smoking weed, surfing the internet, eating a beastly amount of snacks and talking at length about how said snacks would eventually be expelled from their bodies, sparing no nasty detail.

Nope. Not interested in Pepe as a meme, Whatever made Pepe meme-worthy sailed over my head.  But it did not, apparently, sail over the heads of the alt-right.

And then, things got dark. A self-described white nationalist who goes by @JaredTSwift told The Daily Beast that, in 2015, there began “an actual campaign to reclaim Pepe from normies.” (”Normies” are mainstream individuals who don’t lurk in the shadows of racist chatrooms.)

As a result, white nationalists began depicting Pepe in a variety of grossly offensive circumstances. There was Hitler Pepe, shown reading Mein Kampf and sipping from a swastika teacup, and an anti-semitic caricature of a Jewish Pepe, suggesting he was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. “We basically mixed Pepe in with Nazi propaganda, etc. We built that association,” @JaredTSwift said.

Flaming nutjobs seize an image and make it their own. Symbols have been given ridiculous powers over the past few years. The Confederate battle flag, which came into our homes weekly on the roof of a car, now makes people feel so unsafe that they can’t eat or sleep. It’s not that it’s a good symbol, having been created as a representation of those who fought, to some degree, for slavery. But to let a symbol make you cry and “literally shake”?

Pepe the Frog, on the other hand, had no similar beginning. It was just a stupid slacker meme. Does the alt-right’s adoption turn it into a hate symbol?

But Furie isn’t buying the “Pepe as a hate symbol” claim. Namely, he says, because Pepe isn’t a symbol.

“There is no hidden agenda. There is no code with Pepe. Whatever he is, he is, for better or worse,” the artist said. “There are examples of Pepe that are obviously racist. Like Hitler Pepe ― you don’t have to explain that to people. It’s not some secret code.”

Yet, the New York Times has taken this seriously enough to make it the subject of debate:

The social processes responsible for Pepe’s racist rebranding also apply to the Confederate flag and swastika, two of the most recognizable symbols of racial hatred. As with Pepe, these symbols aren’t inherently racist. Both are, like all abstract symbols, arbitrary; different symbols could have been chosen by the Nazis in the 1920s and by white Southerners in the 1960s eager to rewrite history. And yet, both symbols communicate violent racism; that remains the dominant resonant meaning.

Is Pepe the same as the Confederate flag or the swastika?

The Confederate flag was created for the purpose of being the Confederate flag. The swastika existed long before the Nazis seized it for themselves, but it was not an otherwise popular symbol at the time, stolen away from its benign use. And both are extreme cases. But Pepe?

The alt-right adores Taylor Swift as well. Is she now a hate-symbol too?

The genesis of this intellectual downward spiral isn’t a slacker frog, but the very recent appreciation of “social consensus,” that for reasons that remain unclear, mere acceptance by amorphous people (usually on the internet) creates something sufficiently real that it takes on a life of its own.

An individual might declare that his or her personal use of the swastika or Confederate flag isn’t racist, but individual protestation can’t overturn social consensus, or obviate the experiences of those who read the symbols as synonymous with hate.

And that bolded portion is the kicker, that a benign symbol becomes a hate symbol not merely because some nutjobs decided to adopt it for their cause, but because another group has decided that it makes them cry.

Whether this is true, as in “obviate the experiences” of all those people who are whimpering in the corner at the very sight of Pepe the Frog, unable to eat or sleep for fear that they will see a frog and it will make them crumble, is doubtful. But if someone says the symbol makes them sad, it would be unkind to question their “lived experiences.”

So it’s not the fault of Pepe the Frog. It’s not even the fault of alt-right nutjobs, who could just as easily seize upon any other benign symbol. It ultimately comes down to “social consensus” or the feelings of those in constant search of something about which to be outraged.

Pepe is no swastika. Social consensus isn’t the Nazis. And it’s time to call bullshit on those feigning a never-ending stream of harm and tears. Everything is not traumatic, and claiming it is doesn’t make the word or symbol mean what you want it to mean.