What we can VERIFY about a photo that goes viral after nearly every mass shooting in America

Since at least 2015, photos of comedian Sam Hyde have appeared online after various mass shootings across the country. 

After a mass shooting at a Christmas party in San Bernardino, Calif., an image of Hyde holding an assault-style rifle appeared on message boards with false claims he was the attacker. Two years later, photos of Hyde were shared, along with more false claims that he was a shooter who attacked a church in Texas.

More recently, on March 27, a shooter opened fire at a small, private Christian school just south of downtown Nashville, Tenn. Six people were killed during the attack, and the shooter was killed by the police.

After the attack, a photo claiming to identify the shooter went viral on Twitter.

“BREAKING: Nashville Police have positively identified the corpse of the suspected Nashville Covenant School shooter as 31 year old Samantha Hyde,” a portion of one tweet said. 

However, that person was not a shooter identified by the police in the Nashville attack. It was an edited photo of Hyde.

The photos have become so widely circulated after attacks in the U.S., it’s now considered a meme, which is an image that is copied and spread rapidly by internet users, often with slight variations.

Here's what we can VERIFY about Hyde and the origins of this meme.

THE SOURCES

• Archives of social media posts
• Archives of internet message board threads
• Ciaran O’Connor, an analyst with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting extremism and disinformation

WHAT WE FOUND

Sam Hyde is a real person and hasn’t been the suspect in any mass shootings. However, his image has been shared repeatedly on social media in the immediate aftermath of a high-profile attack.

Many of the viral posts claiming Hyde is the “lone white gunman” or known suspect in a number of shootings across the U.S. originated on the anonymous online messaging board, 4chan. The image is a screenshot from one of Hyde’s YouTube videos from his channel, Million Dollar Extreme. Million Dollar Extreme was removed from YouTube in 2018 for violating community guidelines.

People who use the 4chan message board often do so with a goal to mislead or trick people into believing and sharing false information during times of crisis or breaking news. Hyde, a comedian and supporter of alt-right beliefs, is a popular figure on the message board. 

Ciaran O’Connor, an analyst with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, told VERIFY the goal of the posts featuring Hyde is to misinform the media. 

“The motivation is primarily about media manipulation. That is, flooding online spaces during or in the immediate aftermath of an event, such as a mass-shooting attack, that garner widespread news coverage and interest from the public. The overall aim in posting these memes is to fool and confuse people and to try and convince reporters and journalists to name Hyde as a suspect or feature photos of him in their reporting. What started as a joke on sites like 4chan has now become a recurring attempt at trolling journalists and the public,” O’Connor told VERIFY.

The memes appear to have originated following the 2015 San Bernardino, Calif. shooting, which left 14 people dead.

Since then, Hyde’s photo has been used in connection to shootings that have made national headlines in the U.S., such as an attack in New York City and in Sutherland Springs, Texas. Varying images show Hyde holding a weapon. 

The image and corresponding text is often updated to align with the most recent act of violence.

In 2016, Hyde was falsely identified on the message board as the attacker behind a series of bombings in New York City. That post said “BREAKING NEWS Reports confirming Sam Hyde as the NYC bomber NYPD just took him into custody after a shootout in lower manhattan.” 

In November 2017, after the shooting at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, a photo of Hyde holding a weapon was shared. After the photo went viral, Texas Congressman Vicente Gonzalez went live on CNN and falsely identified Hyde by name as the suspect in the shooting.

In April 2018, after the YouTube headquarters shooting in San Bruno, California, a photo of Hyde was falsely shared again.

In the case of the attack in Nashville, the photo of Hyde was edited and claims were shared the attacker was “Samantha Hyde.” Nashville police said that the false claims were shared along with transphobic comments, because police said that the actual Nashville attacker, Audrey Hale, was transgender. 

In nearly every example, the posts on 4chan, and subsequently other social media platforms, falsely claim the information was confirmed by authorities. 

The photos of Hyde have appeared online so frequently, it’s become known as the “Sam Hyde is the shooter” meme. People who keep trying to trick others into using or sharing this meme see breaking news events, such as mass casualty incidents, as an opportunity to capitalize on the moment, O’Connor said. 

“It’s now a popular meme in some online communities and they seem to view each new shooting or similar tragic event as an opportunity to troll and trick online users all over again,” O’Connor said.

“It continues to receive lots of views and engagements because of the desire among the public for information and knowledge about an attack. For online users who are unaware of the meme, it can still be shared rapidly online. For social platforms where this meme regularly goes viral, they are regrettably slow at times in applying content labels to misleading content like this meme,” he told VERIFY.

O’Connor also told VERIFY people who have a goal to mislead the public during times of crisis use terms and hashtags associated with a breaking news event to tag Hyde-related content and ‘hope it will be interpreted as a genuine, informative comment and not as an attempt to troll, fool or confuse online users.”

Hyde addressed the rumors and hoaxes in an interview with Forbes in 2016. Hyde told the reporter, “It’s crazy!,” when asked about the memes. At the time, he also said he has had to answer questions when the memes go viral to even people he knows and explain the memes are a “hoax.”

VERIFY reached out to Hyde for comment, but did not hear back at the time of publication.

Before sharing photos or information during a breaking news event, the VERIFY team recommends that you take the following steps.

• Check the source: Ask yourself, are they credible sources of information?
  • Who’s the author or source?
  • Is the source of information biased? 
  • Have they posted other misinformation before?
  • Is it from a well known or legitimate website?
• Check the date. Is the information current, are other credible sources posting it the same day?
• Conduct a reverse image search. If the image of the suspect has been shared by reputable outlets during breaking news, it could be real. If the same image appeared online connected to other events, like Hyde’s, then you know it’s not legit.
• Pause before sharing if a piece of information makes you feel anxious, upset, or angry. Misinformation often spreads during times of emotion.