Meaning
What does Honkler mean?
Honkler is an expression, related to the Clown World trope, depicts Pepe the Frog dressed in a clown outfit.
The phrase reflects on the absurd state of human society and the world and compels people to be cheerful about the meaninglessness and idiocy of the system and take on the act of the medieval jester, who is humorously mocking the futility of authority.
This kind of behavior is also referred to as being clownpilled or honk pilled and is created as an antithesis of blackpill nihilism, that defines doomers.
Origin
What's the origin of Honkler?
“Honkler” or as it was originally referred to, pepoclown originates from a League of Legends Discord community, called The Shadow Isles.
The edit was created in 2018, by user Brizi.
Spread & Usage
How did Honkler spread?
In January and February 2019, “Honkler” saw significant spread on 4chan’s /v/ and /s4s/ boards, as well as the r/4chan subreddit,
Its popularity surged in April 2019, as a left-wing news site, Right Wing Watch published an article with the title “White Nationalists Adopt Clowns as Their Next Racist Symbol (Yes, Seriously)”.
In the article, they describe the meme to be often referred to as Clown World.
The theme later appeared in YouTube videos, as well as various memes on social media sites, like Twitter and Facebook.
On April 5th, 2019, Lil Lunchbox uploaded a video where she declared war on the meme, resulting in massive arguments and debates on Twitter, Reddit and 4chan.
By June 2019, the aforementioned “war” on “Honkler” had resulted in the ban of the word honk on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, as well as the ban of the r/honkler subreddit, affirming memers’ impressions that we do live in a Clown World.
The term was first defined on Urban Dictionary on June 21st, 2020.
External resources
- Forward.com – No Joke: White Nationalists Are Now Using Clowns To Spread Hatred
- Urban Dictionary – Honkler