4chan Trolling UK Police

Submission 16,603

Part of a series on 2024 United Kingdom Riots. [View Related Entries]

Overview

4chan Trolling UK Police refers to a raid on the United Kingdom police live chats carried out by users of the /pol/ board of the 4chan imageboard in August 2024 with the purpose of wasting their time and drawing resources away from the 2024 United Kingdom anti-immigration riots. The raid started on August 6th, 2024, and involved users contacting United Kingdom police with fake emergencies and crime reports.

Background

In late July 2024, anti-immigrant riots broke out in several parts of the United Kingdom following a stabbing that resulted in the deaths of three children and injuries of several others. The riots involved far-right protesters clashing with police and counter-protestors in various locations, with police making arrests.

On August 6th, 2024, an anonymous 4chan user made a thread in /pol/^[1] in which they urged American users to spam the official British government channels with hate speech in order to "run cover" for British protestors and distract the police forces to prevent them from making arrests (post shown below, left).

In the following hours, users on 4chan started messaging United Kindom police departments with fake reports, with the messages often mocking the British accent and referencing popular memes about the country such as Loicense. For example, on August 7th, an anonymous user posted^[2] a screenshot of a chat conversation with a U.K. police department in which they pretended to be King Charles III (shown below, right).

Developments

The trend continued on August 7th and 8th, 2024, with a number of dedicated threads in which users shared screenshots of them contacting the United Kingdom police.^[3]^[4] In the threads, users posted screenshots of their conversations with law enforcement via live chats (examples shown below, left and right).

In many examples, users pretended to be Indian or Pakistani immigrants or, alternatively, reported fake crimes committed by immigrant groups.

The meme received further development as users started posting fake warnings supposedly issued by the British police towards the raiders (example^[5] from August 7th, 2024, shown below).

On August 8th, some United Kingdom police websites started blocking IP addresses from outside the country.^[9]

Online Reactions

Following the early August 2024 raid, screenshots of users trolling United Kindom police were reposted to other platforms, most notably on X / Twitter. For example, on August 7th, 2024, X^[6] user @AdrianDittmann posted a screenshot from one of the dedicated threads, with the post gaining over 180 reposts and 1,200 likes in one day (shown below, left).

Later that day, comedian Sam Hyde reposted another viral post about the raid, with the post (shown below, right) gaining over 1,300 reposts and 1,700 likes on X^[7] in one day.

On August 8th, 2024, war tourist and internet personality Lord Miles posted several screenshots from the threads, with his post gaining over 3,800 reposts and 48,000 likes on X^[8] in one day, further promoting the meme.