The revolution will not be televised, but it might have webbed feet and bulging eyes.
It also might have a unicorn's horn or a chicken's feathers.
As protests against the Trump administration continue in US cities, demonstrators are adopting the energy of a community costume parade or block party. They've taught salsa lessons, handed out snacks, and ridden unicycles, as armed law enforcement look on.
Mixing humour and politics - a tactic social scientists call tactical frivolity - is not new. But it has become a defining feature of American protest in the Trump era, embraced by both left and right.
And one symbol has emerged as particularly salient - the frog. It began when video footage of a confrontation between a man in a frog suit and immigration enforcement agents in Portland, Oregon, went viral. And it has since spread to protests across the country.
There's a lot going on with that little inflatable frog, says LM Bogad, a professor at University of California, Davis and a Guggenheim Fellow who specializes in performance art.
From Pepe to Portland
It's hard to talk about protests and frogs without talking about Pepe, a cartoon character embraced by far-right groups during Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.
When the meme first took off online, the image was used to signal certain emotions. Later, it was deployed to show support for Trump, including one notable meme retweeted by Trump himself, depicting Pepe with Trump's signature suit and hair.
Pepe was also depicted in right-wing online communities on 4chan, 8chan, and Reddit in darker contexts, as Adolf Hitler or a member of the violent white supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan. Online conservatives traded rare Pepes and set up cryptocurrency in his name. His catchphrase, feels good, man, was deployed as an inside joke.
But Pepe didn't start out so controversial.
Its creator, artist Matt Furie, has been vocal about his distaste for how the image has been used. Pepe was supposed to be simply a chill frog-dude in this artist's universe of characters.
The frog first appeared in a series of comics in 2005 - apolitical and best known for pulling his pants all the way down to pee. In the 2020 documentary Feels Good Man, which chronicles Mr Furie's efforts to wrest back control of his work, he said his Pepe drawing was inspired by his experiences with friends and roommates in his 20s.
Early in his career, Mr Furie experimented with uploading his work to the nascent social web, where other users began to borrow, remix and reinvent his character. As Pepe spread into the more extreme corners of the internet, Mr Furie tried to disavow the frog, even killing him off in a comic strip.
But Pepe lived on.
It shows you that we don't control symbols, says Prof Bogad. They can change and shift and be reworked.
Until recently, the popularity of Pepe meant that frogs were largely associated with the right. But that changed on 2 October, when a confrontation between a protestor dressed in an inflatable frog costume with a blue neck scarf and an immigration officer in Portland, Oregon, went viral.
Controlling the optics
What brings both frogs together - Pepe and the Portland frog - is the interplay between the humorous, benign cartoon amphibian and a deeper political meaning. This is what political scientists call tactical frivolity.
The strategy rests on what Mr Bogad calls the irresistible image - often silly, it's a disarming and charming display that calls attention to your ideas without obviously explaining them to a viewer. It's the goofy costume you wear, or the symbol you draw, or the meme you share.
Mr Bogad is both an expert in the subject and a veteran practitioner himself. He's written a book on the subject, called Tactical Performance: The Theory and Practice of Serious Play, and taught workshops around the world.
Particularly in the current climate crisis, the ability for such playful tactics in protests can help shift narratives around protests being violent or radical, and instead focus on climate justice.
The image of the frog costume has become synonymous with gatherings that advocate for serious climate action while employing humor, thus engaging more individuals in the movement.
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