Slipgate

About

#Slipgate is a photoshop meme featuring a cutout image of a man wearing a T-shirt and briefs while aggressively wielding a shovel. The photograph widely circulated on the French web after being tweeted by the Agence France-Presse in November 2015.

Origin

On November 9th, 2015, the French Agence France-Presse (AFP) tweeted several photos of a man in his underwear attacking activists from the Bird Protection League at a cornfield in Audon, France (shown below).^[1][2][3] According to the AFP,^[6] a man came out of his house and began beating reporters and activists with a large shovel after seeing them destroy traps set for finches.

Spread

That day, Twitter user @Tristan_Brtloot^[4] tweeted a photoshopped image of the man with the shovel on a beach with a sandcastle (shown below, left). Shortly after, Twitter user @Imrage^[5] posted a photoshop of the man wielding a lightsaber weapon from the Starwars franchise (shown below, right).

Meanwhile, Gawker^[8] published an article about the incident titled "Don't Fuck With These Finch Traps Unless You Want to Fight a Shovel-Wielding Underwear Man." Also on November 9th, BuzzFeed^[9] published a compilation of notable slipgate photoshops, referring to the man as the "French Shovel Guy." On the following day, the IBI Times^[7] published an article about the photoshop meme.

Various Examples

Search Interest

Not available.

External References