Hazmat Suit Edits

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About

Hazmat Suit Edits or Hazmatposting refers to a series of memes that involve editing various characters inside a hazmat suit. Originating from and popularized by the 4chan's /pol/ board, the trend is mostly related to the ongoing discussions of the Wuhan Coronavirus Outbreak.

Origin

On January 22nd, 2020, an anonymous 4chan^[1] user posted an edit of Pepe the Frog inside a bright-yellow hazmat suit in a /pol/ board related to the discussion of the Wuhan Coronavirus Outbreak (post and image shown below).

Spread

On the same day, the image was posted in more /pol/^[2]^[3] threads related to the discussion of the outbreak. Within three hours after the first post, the first edit of the image was posted in a /pol/^[4] thread (shown below, left). An Australian Shitposter edit of the image was posted in another /pol/^[5] thread on the same day (shown below, right).

On January 23rd, 2020, an anonymous 4chan user posted a template for the image in a /pol/^[6] thread. Within one hour, the template was reposted in another /pol/^[7] thread, with another version also posted,^[8] and with multiple users submitting their edits in the same thread (examples shown below, left, center and right).^[9]^[10]

In the following days, multiple threads dedicated to Hazmat Suit Edits were created on /pol/. For example, a January 23rd, 2020, thread^[11] received 354 replies. A January 25th, 2020, thread^[12] accumulated 346 replies.

In the following days, the edits received spread on other online platforms, including Kiwi Farms and Twitter.