4chan Analyzes 'My Little Pony' Jar To Deduce That A Viral Photo Claiming To Show The Buffalo Shooter's Bedroom Is A Hoax

Over the past two days, a supposed photograph of the Buffalo supermarket shooter's bedroom has begun circulating on Reddit and Twitter. However, evidence suggests that the photograph is a hoax.

We know from the shooter's manifesto that the attack was racially motivated and he was a frequent visitor of 4chan boards like /k/ and /pol/, all of which add up with details present in the above picture of his supposed bedroom.

The Confederate flag has widely been seen as a sign of racist hatred in previous years, and the swath of My Little Pony merchandise would make sense for someone entrenched in 4chan culture. Eagle-eyed viewers may also notice a suspicious-looking jar on the bedroom's bookshelf, which is reminiscent of other infamous jars in the 4chan My Little Pony fandom history.

The claim that this was Payton Gendron's bedroom has been uncritically parroted on social media, but the evidence suggests this is not true.

The Redditor behind the viral post, u/BaronVonBroccoli, confirmed in a direct message with Know Your Meme that the pic was taken from a /pol/ thread that has since been 404ed, though they assumed the claim was legitimate. There is otherwise no additional source for the image that can be found via reverse image search software like TinEye or Google Images.

Once the image started floating around 4chan with the claim it was the Buffalo shooter's bedroom, sleuths from /pol/ and the /mlp/ (My Little Pony) boards were able to almost completely prove that the claim was false.

The shooter stated in their screed that they'd begun browsing 4chan in 2020. However, a nearly identical picture of the purported shooter's room can be found in an archived /mlp/ thread posted in June 2018.

It's unclear when the room was, shall we say, "expanded" upon. Some 4chan sleuths have investigated the jar in the picture and believe the same jar also existed on 4chan in 2018, before the shooter reportedly started posting.

With this information, it's safer to assume an anon grabbed an old picture circulating on 4chan and attempted to troll people by asserting it was the shooter's room as a means to mock bronies rather than assume the shooter was a secret massive brony and lied about the date they joined 4chan.

It just goes to show that when it comes to cum jars, you can't pull a fast one past the experts.