Gnome Hunting / Millions Wear the Hats

About

Gnome Hunting and Millions Wear the Hats refer to a series of gnomepill and gnomes are real memes and videos on TikTok in which people claim they're hunting for gnomes. The videos were popularized in April 2023. That same month, people began hypothesizing that the term "gnome" is used as a Nazi dog whistle in the videos to refer to Jewish people, with some examples including the phrase "millions wear the hats," a purported reference to the alt-right catchphrase "billions must die."

Origin

In early 2023, ironic videos about the mythical creatures gnomes being real started to become popularized on TikTok (examples shown below). Some of the videos are schizoposts that suggest schizophrenic people believe in gnomes.

In April 2023, videos specifically referring to gnome hunting started to become popularized on the app, some using the term "millions wear the hats" in the descriptions or as a caption. Some of the earliest viral videos referring to gnome hunting were posted by TikToker^[7] @mgd08526 on February 14th, 2023, which include two lightning bolt emojis after the caption "hunting gnomes," sometimes a reference to the Nazi SS logo and TikToker^[1] @sk.lukas on April 10th, garnering over 300,000 views in 10 days (shown below, left and right).

Spread

The videos became further popularized over the following days. On April 18th, 2023, TikToker^[2][3] @gnomesarereal88 began posting videos about gnome hunting, using the phrase "millions wear the hats" in many of them. On that day, two of the user's videos using the phrase were posted and gained over 600,000 and 4.9 million views, respectively, in two days (shown below, left and right).

Dog Whistle Accusations

Around April 17th, 2023, people began sharing the hypothesis that gnome hunting videos are purportedly antisemitic dog whistles used to refer to Jewish people, with the term "gnome" used in place of "Jew."

For example, on April 17th, a Redditor asked if the videos were a dog whistle on /r/Qult_Headquarters,^[8] garnering over 30 upvotes in three days. On April 18th, TikToker^[4] @susanstormborn posted a video explaining how she was interested in the gnome memes but started to notice hidden symbols like lightning bolts and code words relating to things like "the fatherland," claiming the videos are dog-whistles, garnering over 290,000 views in two days (shown below). The theory also began spreading to Twitter.^[5][6]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References