A persistent Internet meme has been given a new lease of life after a mass shooting in a shopping mall in El Paso.
In the direct aftermath of nearly all US mass shootings, a number of rumours and misinformation will spread through social media. One such example of this is the online “meme” that the shooter has been identified as Sam Hyde, an example that is typically accompanied by a blonde man with glasses.
Sam Hyde is a real person, and that really is him in the photos. But he isn’t responsible for any of the mass shootings he has been falsely attributed to. He is the target of online trolls who falsely identify him as a mass shooting perpetrator as some sort of “joke”.
Hyde is a self described “online comedian”, and his photo and name being used to claim he is an active shooter or perpetrator can be traced back to the online forum 4Chan.
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Over the years his photos have spread in the aftermath of the Parkland school shooting, the Santa Fe High school shooting, the Las Vegas concert massacre and the Sutherland Springs shooting (where his name was inadvertently mentioned during a live news broadcast by someone who fell for the hoax.)
In the hours after the El Paso shooting, Hyde’s name and photo are spreading again, only this time someone has digitally added Hyde’s face onto the body of the actual El Paso shooter, subsequently identified as Patrick Crusius, as he entered the shopping mall and began firing at shoppers where he killed 20 people.
Not a real photo.
Despite the popularity of the Sam Hyde “meme” online, many still continue to fall for this on-going hoax and it seems that as mass shootings are likely to continue to inflict themselves in the United States, this particularly terrible hoax will not be going anywhere any time soon.