Haters Gonna Say It's Fake, also known as Haters Gonna Say It's Edited and Haters Gonna Say It's Photoshopped, refers to a series of videos and photographs that have been obviously manipulated for the purposes of comedy.

The earliest known mention of the phrase was posted by Twitter ^[1] user @_dan19 on June 24th, 2012. However, because the image is no longer available, it is difficult to tell whether or not the post was made ironically (shown below).

Two years later, YouTuber "Black Gaming Mafia" posted the video "Haters will say it's fake Basketball edition." The post features a series of edited trick shots for humorous effect (shown below).

On May 30th, 2016, Twitter^[2] user @robertson_Idn posted a series of edited shots of people kicking soccer balls into basketball hoops. The post received more 78,000 retweets and 80,000 likes in two-and-a-half years (shown below). The tweet also popularized of the meme.

Two weeks later, the meme was highlighted by the website Deadspin.^[3]

On January 4th, 2018, recording artist Justin Timberlake released the song "Filthy," which includes the refrain "Haters gonna say it's fake," on YouTube.^[4] The post received more than 67 million views in less than one year (shown below, left).

Later that year, Urban Dictionary^[5] user Dat256guy defined the phrase as "They claim that if you think the footage is fake (which is clearly is, since it has been obviously edited), you’ll just be labeled a hater" (shown below, right).