So how many people need to post the hateful version of it for it to be considered hateful ? A dozen ? A hundred ? A thousand ? It seems weird to focus on the template as a whole as hateful instead of focusing on the hateful uses of the template as hateful . Good and fair points . I ' m not exactly sure , but I ' d guess that something becomes a symbol of hate when the thing and the message become intertwined . If play doh was used as a symbol to promote white nationalism and hateful messages and it got to the point where when people saw play doh , they associated it with Nazis , then it would be a hate symbol . I think until this election cycle , your average American had not paid very much attention to Pepe . I think the first and only images of pepe seen by the average American were the hateful ones . It ' s difficult for people here to understand that people can see things differently to you . All they see is a hate symbol for neonazis and not the memes with or without wojak .