4channer Posts 'In Minecraft' Death Threat Aimed At Local Sheriff, Faces Consequences And Proves Meme's Logic Wrong

March 20th, 2023 - 4:05 PM EDT by Adam Downer

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sheriff chitwood 4chan arrest

It turns out that, despite the promise of the meme, saying "In Minecraft" doesn't absolve you from making incendiary death threats online.

Earlier this month, 4chan poster Richard Golden was arrested in New Jersey after allegedly advocating for the death of local sheriff, Mike Chitwood, in a discussion thread on the site.

Chitwood had become the target of harassment after he recently voiced support for his local Jewish community. On February 22nd, Golden took to the /pol/ (politically incorrect) board and advocated for Chitwood's death, saying people should "shoot him in the head" before ending with "In Minecraft."

in minecraft threat

The "In Minecraft" meme appears to have grown prevalent on /pol/ and was largely used as a way to punctuate alarming statements (though not necessarily to the extremes of Golden's post).

Though the arrest happened on March 1st, the story began going viral over the past week after Chitwood posted a joke about Golden's arrest and body cam footage of the arrest was posted to YouTube.

mike chitwood joke


According to Chitwood, Golden's bail will be set at $100,000, and the New Jersey-based 4channer was charged with a felony count of writing a threat to kill.

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Nukegirl
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Nukegirl

Oh, wow, authorities could see through the world's worst police attention evasion strategy long after its nature had become well-documented public knowledge? What a shocker.

Let's hope that future would-be terrorists will be too slow on the uptake to realize that they'll just be making fools of themselves at best and just making their true intentions even more obvious to outsiders at worst.

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