Yeah I follow what you mean, I guess I'm just arguing that we're still at step 3, because it's still "Pepe the frog" and not just frogs as a general concept or a wide variety of frogs or just "the frog" or whatever. The sign itself hasn't changed since leaving the webcomic, only the context in which it exists. The sign itself also undergoes a transformation, as far as I understand it. Pepe is as much at stage 3 as the squirrel thing is, is what I'm saying.
If you wanna be real pedantic/nitpicky/"having an interesting convo" (the latter is how this interaction feels for me, hopefully it does for you too <3) you could also argue wether the comic is step 1 or 2.
Yeah I follow what you mean, I guess I'm just arguing that we're still at step 3, because it's still "Pepe the frog" and not just frogs as a general concept or a wide variety of frogs or just "the frog" or whatever. The sign itself hasn't changed since leaving the webcomic, only the context in which it exists. The sign itself also undergoes a transformation, as far as I understand it. Pepe is as much at stage 3 as the squirrel thing is, is what I'm saying.
If you wanna be real pedantic/nitpicky/"having an interesting convo" (the latter is how this interaction feels for me, hopefully it does for you too <3) you could also argue wether the comic is step 1 or 2.