Sam Hyde Is The Shooter Hoaxes

About

Sam Hyde Is The Shooter, also known as Sam Hyde Identified As Shooter, refers to a series of hoaxes targeting American comedian Sam Hyde by users on 4chan (among other sites), trolls and critics of his comedy, prompting his name to be invoked as a possible suspect in a number of major gun violence incidents and mass shootings across the U.S. and abroad since 2015, including the shootings in San Bernardino, California, Minneapolis, Minnesota, the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado and the 2024 Donald Trump Rally Shooting. While the photo of Hyde with blonde hair, glasses, a black shirt and an AK-47-style rifle is most commonly used in such memes, other variations have been used over the years, including Photoshop edits that change his face and sometimes his name.

Origin

On November 27th, 2015, an anonymous user of the /r9k/ forum^[1] on the image board site 4chan posted a photo of American comedian Sam Hyde accompanied by a text insinuating that Hyde was the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood shooter (seen below), a mass shooting that occurred on the same day in a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado, resulting in the deaths of three people and injuries to nine.

I'm currently on my way to Colorado Springs and I intend to take care of this liberal shithole myself. America is turning into a liberal shithole with Black Lives Matter and more shite like Planned Parenthood. It's time someone took a stand and did this. I'm not going to say what I'm going to do, but It'll be magical and will have an impact on Obama's future policies. It's time someone brought back Conservative values. I will be the one making it happen. If you live in Colorado Springs, don't go out tomorrow.

Spread

The “Sam Hyde is the shooter” hoax and meme continued to spread on social media over the following years, leading to many news outlets^[2] mistaking the comedian as the actual shooter involved in other high-profile incidents.

For example, the June 2016 UCLA shooting^[3] in which two men were killed at a School of Engineering building on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). On June 1st, 2016, X^[4] user @removerofkebabs posted a picture of Sam Hyde holding a gun, captioning it, "BREAKING: AP confirms UCLA shooter is Sam Hyde." The post (seen below) amassed over 110 likes and 210 retweets at the time (since deleted).

On November 8th, 2017, Sam Hyde was reported as the shooter after the Texas church massacre by Rep. Vicente González during a CNN^[5] interview (seen below), which amassed over 93,000 views and 1,300 likes in seven years.

Sam Hyde's Response To The Meme

On August 4th, 2019, Hyde commented about the "Sam Hyde is the shooter" meme in a video posted on his YouTube^[7] channel in which he alleges being questioned by the FBI multiple times after trolls accused him of being the shooter of a gun-related incident. The video (seen below) amassed more than 404,000 views and 11,000 likes in five years.

2024 Donald Trump Rally Shooting Hoax

Images of Sam Hyde once again became the subject of a hoax in July 2024, with the comedian being falsely accused as the man responsible for the 2024 Donald Trump Rally Shooting.

For instance, on July 13th, 2024, X^[6] user @liberaldestro posted Hyde's picture holding a gun and Trump's shooting footage, captioning it, "39-year-old Sam Hyde has been identified as the man responsible for shooting at Trump." The post (seen below) amassed more than 500 likes and 62 reposts in four days.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References