Possible Modifications

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Part of a series on Gun Control Debate. [View Related Entries]

About

Possible Modifications is a photoshop meme mocking an animated video by USA Today featuring attachments that could potentially be added to an AR-15 style rifle in the wake of the 2017 Sutherland Springs church shooting.

Origin

On November 8th, 2017, the @USAToday Twitter feed posted a video titled "A look at the gun used in the Texas church shooting," which contained an animated sequence on "Possible modifications" showing a chainsaw bayonet (shown below). Within 24 hours, the tweet gained over 2,800 replies, 1,800 likes and 1,100 retweets.

Spread

Immediately after the tweet was posted, many mocked the animation for showing a chainsaw bayonet attachment, leading the @USAToday Twitter to post a follow-up tweet noting "The shooter did not use a chainsaw bayonet" (shown below).

That day, a Twitter Moments^[1] page was created featuring various joke tweets about the USA Today video.

That evening, an anonymous 4chan user submitted the tweet to /pol/ in a post titled "Where can I buy a Chainsaw Bayonet?", leading viewers to submit other "Possible Modifications" photoshops (shown below). Shortly after, Redditor Strangled_Hooker submitted a collection of parodies collected from the /pol/ thread to /r/4chan,^[2] where it gathered upwards of 9,600 points (92% upvoted) and 270 comments within 24 hours.

In the coming days, many news sites published articles about the photoshop meme, including Business Insider,^[4] Townhall,^[5] The Washington Times,^[7] RT,^[8] The Washington Examiner^[9] and Breitbart.^[6]