About

Trolling the Guardian refers to a series of photoshopped images of the opinion section on The Guardian website. The images featuring edited parody headlines began trending in early December 2019 after popular Twitter parody account Shaniqua O'Tool was suspended from Twitter after The Guardian editor Tom Stevens filed a copyright strike against the account.

Origin

According to The Post Millennial,^[1] "on November 29th, 2019, the [Shaniqua O'Tool] account received a copyright strike notice from Twitter. The claim was apparently filed by Guardian editor Tom Stevens, who wrote that Shaniqua’s infringement was 'pretending to be a Guardian writer. The tweets are fake and offensive.'" Shaniqua O'Tool's post typically included edited headlines using The Guardian opinion article format (shown below).

Spread

On December 2nd, 2019, Twitter user @godblesstoto^[2] tweeted a photoshopped headline with the caption "Stop #TrollingTheGuardian with stuff like this, they really don't like it 😠😠😠" (shown below, left). The tweet which also linked a meme generator^[6] for the format in the replies gained over 1,700 likes and 360 retweets in two days. That same day, Twitter user @A_illustration^[3] posted another edit using the hashtag #trollingtheguardian (shown below, right). The tweet accumulated over 1,900 likes and 490 retweets in two days. #TrollingTheGuardian began trending on Twitter that day.

That same day, Twitter user @TheHevo^[4] tweeted an photoshop with the headline "Why professors are the best people to decide what the working class are allowed to think" (shown below, right). The tweet garnered over 2,000 likes and 560 retweets in two days. The next day, Twitter user @JonathanPieNews^[5] tweeted screenshots of real headlines with the caption "As amusing as the #TrollingTheGuardian hashtag is, isn’t it rendered a tad redundant when these are all genuine Guardian headlines?" (shown below, right). The tweet gained over 2,300 likes and 550 retweets in a day.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References