Clovergender
About
"Clovergender" is a fake gender identity term for pedophiles who supposedly identify as children. The term was coined by members of 4chan as part of an internet hoax campaign to discredit sexual minorities and LGBTQ activists.
Origin
On December 31st, 2016, several threads announcing the creation of a "new gender to troll social justice warriors" surfaced on 4chan, urging participants to create "propaganda images" and sock puppet accounts to spread a hoax that pedophiles were identifying as "clovergender" to legitimize themselves
Spread
On December 31st, 2016, the Clovergender Facebook[1] page was launched and the @Clovergender[6] Twitter feed was created. Over the next several days, several clovergender-themed Tumblr blogs were created, including proud2exist,[2] clovergendersafespace,[3] clovergendered[4] and clovergenderandproud.[5] On January 1st, a post titled Clovergender was submitted to the /r/drunkenpeasants[7] subreddit. On January 4th, 2016, Martin Shkreli tweeted "plrease spread clovergender awareness (shown below, left).[11] The same day, Twitter user Lauren Southern tweeted a screenshot of a Tumblr post about clovergender, which gathered upwards of 4,900 likes and 2,600 retweets (shown below, right).
Also on January 4th, a page titled "Clovergender" was created on Encyclopedia Dramatica,[8] described it as a "troll" created on 4chan. On January 6th, Snopes[9] published an article about the hoax campaign titled "Cloverfailed."
Search Interest
External References
[1] Facebook – Clovergender
[2] Tumblr – proud2exist
[3] Tumblr via Wayback Machine – clovergendersafespace
[4] Tumblr via Wayback Machine – clovergendered
[5] Tumblr – clovergenderandproud
[6] Twitter via Wayback Machine – @Clovergender
[7] Reddit – Clovergender
[8] Encyclopedia Dramatica – Clovergender
[9] Snopes – Cloverfailed
[10] Twitter – @Lauren_Southern
[11] Twitter – @MartinShkreli
[12] LOGO – People Claiming To Be “Clovergender” Are Actually The Worst Kind Of Internet Trolls