400 Pound Hacker

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Part of a series on 2016 United States Presidential Election Debates. [View Related Entries]

About

400 Pound Hacker refers to a comment made by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump during the first 2016 United States Presidential Debate in which he disparagingly suggested the hacker in the Democratic National Committee Email Leak could be a someone on their bed who weighs 400 pounds.

Origin

While discussing the Democratic National Committee Email Leak, Trump said that while Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton was certain the culprit was Russia, it could just as easily have been China or "someone sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds."

Spread

Shortly after the comment, Twitter users reacted at the bizarreness of the comment. Some tweets included photos of South Park and Simpsons characters.^[5] One tweet by @pattymo^[1] suggested Trump lost the alt-right vote with the comment, and gained nearly 7,800 retweets and 20,000 favorites in two days (shown below).

Sure enough, backlash to the comment came from 4Chan users, according to articles from The Daily Beast^[2] and Forward,^[4] who called 4Chan an alt-right board. The Anonymous Twitter account tweeted a picture of a Boogie wearing the Anonymous mask saying "@realdonaldtrump, hey you called?"^[3]

Uproxx^[5] covered Twitter's reaction, while Yahoo^[6] covered Trump's fatshaming. CNet,^[8] Gizmodo,^[9] Mic,^[10] and more covered the comment.

A Novelty Twitter Account was devoted to the 400 pound hacker and gained over 700 followers.^[7]