If you don't know what Pepe the Frog is, close this article now and enjoy the rest of your life. If you do, there's no gentle way to say this: Pepe has become a meme-based form of cryptocurrency, and that's just where we're at now.
Like most of the worst things, it started as a joke. Artists created designs they started calling "rare Pepes." Get it? Because everything online is infinitely copy-pastable. But then, by using blockchain tech, they found a way to actually make such creations rare, producing a set number of copies with a digital signature. We're not going to pretend to understand how that works -- you could replace "blockchain" with "wizard magic" in most contexts and it would make about as much sense -- but it worked, and now it's a thriving economy. So if that world-ending meteor could hurry it up, that would be great.
Rare Pepe DirectoryLike this poorly made JPEG that a real human paid 3,300 real dollars for.
Seriously, these digital trading cards regularly sell for thousands of dollars in PepeCash, the cryptocurrency developed alongside the concept. If you need to take a break to really absorb every word of that sentence, we understand. There are even people employed as quality control experts, who authenticate each Rare Pepe. So if only one good thing comes of this, it's giving a lot of middle-schoolers nice summer jobs.
A few years ago, Staples came up with a promotion to convey the ease of access to their products and services: Simply put a red button on your desk, and whenever you need a new office supplies, you slap the button and your request appears as if out of thin air. Naturally, the internet had to make it weird, and thus the Nut Button meme was born.
Via Know Your MemeSo there you go. To really excite your partner, try calling them "dank" in an intimate moment. They'll love that.