What is Sam Hyde Is The Shooter Hoaxes?

It is a long-running trolling meme where 4chan users and Twitter/X accounts falsely claim comedian Sam Hyde is the gunman after mass shootings, usually paired with a photo of him holding an AK-style rifle.

Where did Sam Hyde Is The Shooter Hoaxes come from?

It started on November 27, 2015, when an anonymous 4chan /r9k/ poster claimed Hyde was the Planned Parenthood shooter in Colorado Springs on the day of the attack.

What does Sam Hyde Is The Shooter Hoaxes mean?

The hoax works as a stress test for gullible news audiences and outlets, showing how fast a fake ID can spread after a tragedy, while also acting as a targeted trolling campaign against Hyde himself.

How do you use Sam Hyde Is The Shooter Hoaxes?

Posters typically drop the AK-rifle photo of Hyde into replies under breaking-news tweets, often with fake wire-service phrasing like "AP confirms" the suspect is Sam Hyde.

Is Sam Hyde Is The Shooter Hoaxes still popular?

Yes, the hoax was recycled again on July 13, 2024, after the Trump rally shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, when X user @liberaldestro posted Hyde's picture and racked up more than 500 likes.

Sam Hyde Is The Shooter Hoaxes

2015hoax / image macroresurgent

Published August 11, 2026

Sam Hyde Is The Shooter is a long-running 4chan hoax that falsely names comedian Sam Hyde as the gunman after mass shootings, using a photo of him holding an AK-style rifle. It started with the 2015 Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood attack and has been recycled after nearly every major U.S. shooting since, including the 2024 Trump rally attempt.

hoax memes 4chan memes trolling memes misinformation memes unwilling celebrity memes

Overview

Sam Hyde Is The Shooter is a running hoax in which 4chan users, trolls, and Sam Hyde antifans falsely identify the American comedian as the gunman behind high-profile mass shootings1. The bait usually pairs a photo of Hyde with blonde hair, glasses, a black shirt and an AK-style rifle with fake breaking-news copy, though Photoshopped variants swap in different faces or aliases3.

Since November 2015, the joke has been recycled after almost every major U.S. shooting, from Colorado to California to Texas, and internationally, sometimes fooling working reporters and even a sitting congressman1. Hyde himself has said the FBI questioned him more than once because of it2.

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Origin & Background

Platform

4chan /r9k/ (origin), Twitter/X (viral spread)

Creator

Anonymous 4chan user

Date

2015

The hoax began on November 27, 2015, when an anonymous poster on 4chan's /r9k/ board attached a photo of Sam Hyde to a claim that he was the gunman at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs earlier that day, an attack that killed three people and wounded nine3. The post was designed as pure bait, and it spread off 4chan within hours as screenshots hit Twitter and Facebook1.

How It Spread

Days later, after the December 2015 San Bernardino attack, fake accounts, including a spoof Bill O'Reilly handle, pushed Hyde as a suspect before the real killers, Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, were named by police1. On June 1, 2016, X user @removerofkebabs posted Hyde's photo with the caption "BREAKING: AP confirms UCLA shooter is Sam Hyde," collecting more than 110 likes and 210 retweets before the post was deleted; the actual UCLA gunman was Mainak Sarkar4.

The hoax reached cable news on November 8, 2017, when Rep. Vicente González repeated Hyde's name during a CNN interview about the Sutherland Springs church shooting in Texas5. BuzzFeed reporter Ishmael Daro traced part of the campaign to Daily Stormer readers who were instructed to "mention Sam Hyde and act like everyone is supposed to know who he is" in article comment sections, which Hyde himself described to BuzzFeed as an anti-Semitic bullying effort against him1. On August 4, 2019, Hyde posted a video on his YouTube channel talking about the meme and the FBI visits it triggered, which pulled more than 404,000 views and 11,000 likes2.

The template came roaring back on July 13, 2024, after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump at a Butler, Pennsylvania rally. X user @liberaldestro posted Hyde's picture next to shooting footage captioned "39-year-old Sam Hyde has been identified as the man responsible for shooting at Trump," gathering more than 500 likes and 62 reposts within four days6.

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How to Use This Meme

The typical format is a fake breaking-news post that names Sam Hyde as the suspect within minutes of a real shooting or violent event, usually attached to the AK-style rifle photo or a Photoshopped edit that swaps his face onto a police lineup or news chyron3. Posters often mimic wire-service phrasing like "AP confirms" or "suspect identified as" to try to slip past casual readers, and the joke is only funny to people already in on it4.