Greetings Federal Agents, I Am a Satire Account

About

Greetings Federal Agents, usually continued I Am a Satire Account, refers to several copypastas and a series of reaction images structured as disclaimers for the scenario when the user's account or a group chat they are a member of gets investigated by federal authorities or draws media attention. The practice of posting such a disclaimer first achieved popularity during the time of Queen of England Death Predictions meme trend in January 2019, and achieved further spread during the 2019 iFunny controversy when presence of radicalized users on the platform drew media attention.

Origin

In early January 2019, a copypasta presented as a disclaimer denying any criminal involvement in case of an investigation by federal authorities achieved popularity as a part of the Queen of England Death Predictions meme trend. While the exact origin of the copypasta is unknown, on January 4th, 2019, Redditor ThankYouMrSotarks made the earliest found repost it in the /r/copypasta^[1] subreddit (shown below). On January 5th, Redditor SimonBuffel posted it in a commentary section of a /r/dankmemes^[2] post, with the comment gaining over 210 upvotes in five years. On February 8th, 2019, X^[3] / Twitter user @SwiftCop posted the copypasta, with the post garnering 15 reposts and over 110 likes in five years.

On August 10th, 2019, soon after the FBI raided the home of iFunny user Justin Olsen / ArmyOfChrist where they seized guns and ammunition, and iFunny drew media attention over the presence of radicalized users on the platform, iFunny^[4] user mitzuha recaptioned an older image macro of Barack Obama, "Greetings news journalists and possible federal agents, I am a satire account" (original meme and recaptioned version shown below, left and right). The post accumulated over 9,800 smiles in four years and was republished by multiple accounts.

Additionally, during that period multiple iFunny users added similarly-structured disclaimers to their profile descriptions (examples shown below).

Spread

In the following years, multiple reaction images captioned with versions of the copypasta were posted online, posted by users to either claim their content should be viewed as satire or, on the contrary, state that their posts are sincere. For example, on March 24th, 2020, Redditor TheLittlePrince- posted a Staring Cat version of the meme that garnered over 4,100 upvotes in the /r/okbuddyretard^[5] subreddit in four years (shown below, left). In 2021, a version based on a photograph of a Shiba Inu dog saw viral spread (shown below, right).^[6][7]

On June 29th, 2021, Tumblr user guerrilaltech posted an image macro of Neon Genesis Evangelion character Asuka Langley captioned, "Greetings federal agents, I am a satire account" (shown below, left). The post was followed by three other users replying with versions based on other Neon Genesis Evangelion characters, and another user making a Political Compass meme based on the posts (shown below, right). The thread garnered over 34,800 reblogs and 39,600 likes in two years.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References