Pedo Bear
Pedobear is an Internet meme that became popular through the imageboard 4chan. As the name suggests ("pedo" being short for "pedophile"), it is portrayed as a pedophilic bear. It is a concept used to mock pedophiles or people who have any sexual interest in children or jailbait. The bear image has been likened to bait used to lure children or as a mascot for pedophiles.The bear character originates from the popular bulletin board system (BBS) website 2channel in Japan, where it was introduced, in the form of Shift_JIS art, as クマー (Kumā), an interjection of the word 熊 (Kuma) meaning bear in Japanese. Unlike Pedobear, Kumā has no sexual connotations, pedophilic or otherwise.
Although initially appearing as a single line:
くまくま━━━━━━ヽ（ ・(ｪ)・ ）ノ━━━━━━ !!!
various posts modified it until reaching the final form as multi-line art:
Eventually, posting Kuma Shift_JIS art evolved into a response to "fishing" posts submitted as "bait" to attract people (fishing for attention), which is why the bear is depicted as literally running into the forum to get the bait.
The Kuma character was adopted by 4chan and quickly became a meme there, especially on the /b/ board. On 2ch, Kuma was often depicted in images sleeping with children, and this was promptly exploited on 4chan to create the Pedobear persona. Soon it gained its representation as an image rather than text art, and started being superimposed in pictures depicting children (especially if these pictures could be interpreted as sexually suggestive, such as when involving swimsuits, underwear or child beauty pageants). Another common use of the character was to mock or otherwise signal the posting of borderline child erotica content, sometimes with references to FBI or Chris Hansen, the host of the TV show To Catch a Predator.
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