Apu Gurl

ABOUT

Apu Gurl is an anthropomorphic female frog character that is a customizable variant of Pepe the Frog and drawn in the style of Apu Apustaja ("Help Helper" in English), himself also a poorly drawn variation of Pepe the Frog created in the style of Spurdo Spärde. Apu Gurl, as she is now known, is often depicted as a cute companion to Apu Apustaja, but also as a cheeky character with her own playful personality that is shown in her own adventures as well as interactions with other frog characters. Although her character has developed across several forums and media, Apu Gurl is often referenced as a member of the 4chan group of frog characters

A chart credited to X user @froggy_pot showing Pepe and many of the subsequent frog characters often found on 4chan notes that “Apugurl,” along with Apu Apustaja, Honkler, Groyper, Original Peepo, Smidge, Marv, Froggy Pot Peepo, and Peepo as memes which “may have been inspired by Pepe, but they are not Pepe.” While the date and location of the chart’s original posting is not confirmed, it was posted on GAB as early as November 30, 2022.^[1]

As she was depicted in the chart above, Apu Gurl is often drawn as wearing a pink dress and bow, but she is also drawn wearing costumes and "trad" style clothes.

ORIGIN

Apu Gurl is speculated to have originated from the Finnish image board Ylilauta where Apu Apustaja also originated. While no archived threads exist, she appears in many user-created “media packs” on Ylilauta which are curated images created or gathered by a user and placed into collections that can be used as reactions. While many media pack links are no longer working, a couple are still accessible for reference.^{[2] [3]}

Online searches for specific name variants such as “Apu Gurl” and “Girl Apustaja” show the earliest searchable reference to her current name occurred on the (r/Apustaja) subreddit with a post and photo from July 1, 2021 captioned “Gurl Apu Has Breb.”^[5]

SPREAD

On July 1, 2019, a popular Telegram channel titled “Pepe Library”^[4] which curates and posts anthropomorphic frog memes featuring many different 4chan frog characters (with 23,165 subscribers as of the time of this submission), posted an initial batch of 96 memes that included FOUR memes with the Apu Gurl character. On July 5, 2019, a standalone meme of Apu Gurl was also posted. That channel continues to post Apu Gurl memes that depict her with other 4chan frogs or that feature Apu Gurl by herself.

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As early as October 28, 2019, the “/r/Apustaja” subreddit for Apu Apustaja included a cross posted meme including the female Apu Gurl character and a Kanye West reference.^[11]

In addition to those posts documented above which contain some of the earliest known references to the Apu Gurl character, she has been and continues to be posted and developed on Twitter, 4chan, various frog-themed Telegram channels, and similar frog-themed subreddits on Reddit, as well as other pop-culture communities.

External Reference Footnotes

Fn1^. “4chan frog chart”:https://gab.com/Brancn123/posts/109431514208940757
Fn2^. "Media pack 1"https://ylilauta.org/media-pack/4894185-tytysammakot
Fn3^. “Media pack 2”:https://ylilauta.org/media-pack/4936011-is-ukko-l-tt
Fn4^. “Pepe Library”: https://t.me/PepeLib
Fn5^. "Gurl Apu Has Breb"::https://www.reddit.com/r/Apustaja/comments/oc7l6n/gurl_apu_has_breb/
Fn6^. “Apu Helper Family 1”:https://t.me/PepeLib/19
Fn7^. “Apu Helper mother and baby”:https://t.me/PepeLib/30
Fn8^. “Apu Helper Family 2”:https://t.me/PepeLib/35
Fn9^. “Apu Helper girl hug”:https://t.me/PepeLib/77
Fn10^. “Trad Wife Apu Helper”:https://t.me/PepeLib/115
Fn11^. “Oct 28, 2019 r/Apustaja post”:https://web.archive.org/web/20191030210039mp_/https://www.reddit.com/r/Apustaja/comments/dogxfq/baby_lets_put_this_back_on_the_tree_cause_we_have/