J.K. Rowling Killed 2 People In 1993 Drunk Driving Incident Hoax — Harry Potter t-shirt with fabricated J.K. Rowling drunk driving text, overlaid on burning

J.K. Rowling Killed 2 People In 1993 Drunk Driving Incident Hoax

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Published October 15, 2026

In June 2023, Twitter users tricked unlicensed merchandise scraper bots into printing T-shirts bearing the fabricated libel 'In 1993, J.K. Rowling killed two people while driving drunk,' as part of a bait operation targeting the platform's bot problem. The invented crime turned up on Google shopping listings within hours, and the originating tweet drew more than 52,000 likes the same day.

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Overview

Participants work the hoax through a simple bait and reveal. A user posts a shirt image containing text that no legitimate retailer would print, in this case a fake British libel claim about Rowling attached to Harry Potter cover art, then waits for scraper bots to copy the design onto their own storefronts. Replies advertising the merchandise become the joke, since each one proves the bot scanned the image without reading the text3.

The baiting line, 'In 1993, J.K. Rowling killed two people while driving drunk. We are subject to all British libel laws,' was chosen because it reads like a dare: the second sentence openly flags the claim as libel under UK law, which should stop any human merchant from going near it2. Earlier bait operations in 2019 used a similar trick with shirts reading, 'This site sells STOLEN artwork,' and the 2023 revival pointed out how little had changed about Twitter's scraper economy in four years3.

Origin & Background

Platform
Twitter
Date
2023

Twitter user @MrTooDamnChris posted the originating tweet on June 11, 2023, asking where someone could buy a shirt he said he had just seen in public1. The attached picture showed Harry Potter cover art placed over the fake drunk driving line about Rowling, and the post drew more than 52,000 likes within a day1. Despite the casual question, the tweet functioned as bait: within hours, scraper bots that monitor Twitter for merchandise opportunities began replying with links to real storefronts selling the invented shirt4.

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How It Spread

Later the same day, @MrTooDamnChris quote tweeted one of the bot responses to show the receipts, drawing more than 4,000 additional likes4. User @PDXAccountabil1 followed with screenshots of Google search results for the Rowling line, showing that unlicensed T-shirt sites had already indexed the fake libel as if it were a real quote attached to a real product5.

@Esqueer_ extended the operation with a second bait post using an image from an Oxfam video that some viewers compared to a caricature of Rowling. That tweet drew over 6,500 likes in under a day and triggered its own round of bot replies6, including one documented by user @govindh2. The June 11 posts echoed an earlier 2019 operation in which users baited bots into producing shirts about stolen artwork3.

Timeline

2019

Earlier Twitter campaign baits scraper bots into producing shirts reading 'This site sells STOLEN artwork, do NOT buy from them!'

2023-06-11

@MrTooDamnChris posts the originating tweet showing a Harry Potter shirt with the fake 1993 Rowling drunk driving line, drawing over 52,000 likes within a day.

2023-06-11

@MrTooDamnChris quote tweets a scraper bot reply linking to a storefront selling the invented shirt, gathering over 4,000 additional likes.

2023-06-11

@Esqueer_ extends the hoax with a second bait post using an Oxfam-video image compared to a caricature of Rowling, drawing over 6,500 likes.

2023-06-11

@PDXAccountabil1 posts screenshots showing Google search results for the fake libel already indexing unlicensed T-shirt sites.

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How to Use This Meme

To bait scraper bots, participants typically post an image overlaid with text that no legitimate seller would reproduce, such as an openly libelous statement, and then screenshot the bot replies linking to real storefronts selling the design5.

Frequently Asked Questions