ATF / Fedposting

About

ATF / Fedposting is a genre of memes that revolve around federal agents. Whereas other memes involving federal agents, such as glowposting, are about identifying federal agents that pretend to be Boogaloo boys, fedposting refers to the act of posting about them in general or planning for when they actually do come to perform a raid on someone.

Origin

Fedposting has been a common part of 4chan board humor for over a decade, as the site often discusses things, such as guns and drugs, that would pique the interest of federal agencies. When the board /r9k/ became more popular, most fedposting transferred to that space.

The most common forms of fedposting are the ones that revolve around the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives). The majority of memes surrounding the ATF involve standoffs, gun confiscation and dog shooting. The reasoning behind this is largely traced back to the incidents in both Ruby Ridge and Waco, Texas. At both of these, the starting trigger for the commotion was dogs being shot at, and the general theme of them being raids on people for gun-confiscation reasons. One of the earliest examples of a meme about being raided was posted on 4chan by an anonymous user on December 11th, 2011, in a classic greentext submission (shown below).

Among the /r9k/ crowd, the ATF and other "alphabet boys" are typically seen as a boogeyman-type entity, one that exists to erase your gun rights, take your guns and shoot your dog. Because of this, many of the memes about the alphabet boys include setting up traps in and around the house and getting out of trouble with them via boating accidents and other technicalities to escape legal repercussions for gun ownership.

A common meme when it comes to the ATF is boating accidents, as it is a commonly held belief that claiming your guns were lost in a boating accident will allow you to secretly keep them. This type of meme has continued to stay popular in various places, often getting more attention shortly after new gun bills are proposed. An example of this can be found on the /r/liberationmeme^[1] subreddit, posted by Redditor How_To_Liberty on March 22, 2019, earning 390 upvotes in two years (shown below).

Spread

Memes at the expense of alphabet boys have been a consistent staple in fringe groups online for over a decade and can be found on many different websites, often increasing or decreasing with the national politics of the time. Memes about not trusting federal agents and the government continue to spread online while citing Waco and Ruby Ridge, as seen in the Reddit post on the r/politicalcompass subreddit on April 9th, 2021, by Redditor^[2] elbartoreddit that received 880 upvotes in two months (shown below).

Another of the most common memes about the ATF is their alleged penchant for "shooting dogs." Besides the two infamous cases above, it is part of police and federal agent policy to defend oneself from an animal that is attacking them, and oftentimes a dog is used as a protective deterrent to criminal activity. These two factors together create a situation where, often in news stories, a mention of the owner's dog being shot during a police or federal agency raid will be made. Due to this, it is a staple meme to say that the ATF and other agencies will arbitrarily shoot your dog for no reason, as seen in the meme on the r/PoliticalCompassMemes^[3] subreddit by Redditor u/HappyRuski on May 31st, 2021, which earned 5,800 upvotes in 25 days (shown below).

Search Interest

External References