Frazzledrip

About

Frazzledrip is the name of a rumored "snuff" film purportedly found on the laptop hard drive of former American politician Anthony Weiner in 2016 when his laptop was seized by the New York City police department (NYPD) over his 2016 sexting scandal. The Frazzledrip film supposedly showed former First Lady Hillary Clinton and Weiner's ex-wife Huma Abedin engaging in a Satanic ritual in which they cut the face off of a young girl, wore it like a mask and drank her adrenochrome. Additionally, the conspiracy theorists alleged that NYPD officers who saw the film died recently after seeing it, either due to suicide or murder. The Frazzledrip conspiracy theory came at the end of Pizzagate leading into the popularity of QAnon in the 2020s. Many users on the dark web have also purported that they had seen the film while all major news outlets and fact-checking sources stated that the theory was false. Regardless, politicians, most notably Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene in 2021, seemingly supported the Frazzledrip conspiracy online via infographics on Facebook and elsewhere. In 2023, discourse about Frazzledrip resurfaced on X / Twitter in viral posts, inspiring backlash regarding X's seemingly lax moderation.

Origin

In April 2018, a screenshot of a Facebook post from a user named Marsha Holland (since deleted) was used as evidence in a fact-checking article by Snopes^[11] in relation to the Frazzledrip conspiracy (shown below). The post was dated April 4th, 2018, and is currently the first-known post about Frazzledrip.

Spread

On April 13th and 14th, 2018, screenshots of since-deleted Facebook posts and 8chan threads started to surface on X^[1][2] (shown below). One of the Facebook posts was from a woman named Rhonda Sparkman whose page has since been deleted, however, an Instagram^[3] profile with the same profile picture and name is sourceable. The other post was from a man named John Miranda.

On April 14th, YouTuber^[9] Ghost X Channel posted a video (since deleted) titled "EMERGENCY UPDATE: HRC RAPE TAPE DROPPPED! #QANON #CBTS #PIZZAGATE #PEDOGATE #FRAZZLEDRIP #PEDOVORE," which received over 89,000 views in one week.

Soon after, on April 15th, a thread was started on 4chan's /pol/^[4] board about the video. A screenshot was shared by one /pol/^[5] user in the thread which seemingly showed a conversation in /pol/ about the alleged video a day prior, however, the thread pictured has not been found (shown below, click to enlarge).

On April 15th, 2023, a website called YourNewsWire.com^[7] published an article called "‘Horrific’ Hillary Clinton Snuff Film Circulating On Dark Web" in which the writer alleged that the film had been "circulating on the dark web" since April 9th, 2018, according to "reliable sources who have viewed the material and confirm the content is 'worse than any nightmare.'" On April 16th, a different website, The Pedo Gate,^[6] published its own piece on Frazzledrip.

The hashtag #frazzledrip started to spread on X/Twitter in mid-April 2018. In turn, satirical and memetic content about the conspiracy theory started to manifest, such as a post from X^[10] user @gonetobeans on April 15th, 2018, which shared a YouTube link captioned "Here is the vid," however, the link bait-and-switched users to a Rickroll.

On April 16th, 2018, fact-checking outlet Snopes^[11] published an article that debunked Frazzledrip, titled "Frazzledrip: Is a Hillary Clinton 'Snuff Film' Circulating on the Dark Web?" Snopes ultimately labeled the theory as false.

QAnon Resurgence

In the early 2020s, discourse about Frazzledrip gained a resurgence, predominantly due to increased awareness of the conspiracy theory in QAnon circles. For instance, on August 13th, 2020, ADL^[12] published an article called "QAnon Conspiracies on Facebook Could Prompt Real-World Violence" in which they included a screenshot of a Frazzledrip infographic shared in the since-deleted Facebook group Official Q / QAnon Public Group (shown below).

Marjorie Taylor Greene Supporting Frazzledrip Controversy

On January 26th, 2021, X^[13] user @ehananoki shared a screenshot that showed that Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene had commented on and engaged with a Frazzledrip-related Facebook post back in 2018. @ehananoki ultimately condemned Greene's prior support of the theory, gaining roughly 3,400 likes in two years (shown below, left). Also on January 26th, Greene responded to the resurfacing of her Facebook presence on X,^[14] gaining roughly 7,600 likes in two years (shown below, right).

During the same timeframe, news outlets like Vice^[15] and the Los Angeles Times^[16] picked up the story, publishing articles about the controversy.

2023 Resurgence On X

In 2023, following Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter and rebrand to X, posts related to Frazzledrip started to go viral on the platform likely due to a decrease in censorship.

The phenomenon was highlighted by X^[17] user @Shayan86 on June 27th, 2023, in a post that received roughly 183,900 views and 1,300 likes in three months (shown below, left). Regardless, months later, on September 12th, 2023, X^[18] user @ShadowofEzra posted a long-form post that outlined the Frazzledrip conspiracy theory in full, receiving roughly 1.8 million views and 16,900 likes in three days (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References