On October 3 2021, a tweet attributed to Charlie Kirk appeared on the subreddit r/HermanCainAward — purportedly proposing an alternative cure for COVID-19:
In the sidebar of the subreddit r/HermanCainAward, a short statement explained its purpose:
The Herman Cain Freedom Award
Mission Statement:This subreddit serves as a statement to the danger and effect that misinformation can and does have. The creator and moderators of /r/HermanCainAward look forward to the day when there are no more nominees, and no more recipients. We actively encourage vetted Immunized to Prevent Award (IPA) posts. Anyone who visits here and decides to get vaccinated is our stated goal.
The three tweets attributed to Kirk read:
So I managed to test positive for Covid. I was in REALLY bad shape, ready to go to the hospital, but a friend recommended a treatment that 100% worked like a miracle. It sounds crazy and gross but I swear it may have literally saved my life.
Again, I know this sounds insane, but you take a little dog poop, just a small amount, like half an ounce. Mix it up however you need to, I put mine in am milkshake and barely tasted it. I was completely cured within an hour.
I guarantee that NO ONE in the medical establishment will acknowledge its efficacy but IT WORKS
Google Trends data indicated a spike in searches for “Charlie Kirk dog poop” beginning on October 3 2021. Meme aggregation site iFunny featured two iterations of the purported tweets as of October 4 2021.
In one of the top comments on the Reddit thread, submitter u/carrorphcarp directed readers to Reddit’s r/totallyrealtweets — a subreddit for satirical fake tweets:
As for u/carrorphcarp, that user is a prolific creator of satirical tweets for Reddit:
In a comment on the r/HermanCainAward post above, u/carrorphcarp explained that the tweet was satire, and described how they had generated it:
Although u/carrorphcarp frequently explained their contributions were satirical, the Charlie Kirk “dog poop” tweet was decoupled from its source and shared to sites such as iFunny. Kirk did not tweet the three things depicted, as indicated in the comment above.
- "Again, I know this sounds insane, but you take a little dog poop, just a small amount, like half an ounce. Mix it up however you need to, I put mine in am milkshake and barely tasted it. I was completely cured within an hour." | r/HermanCainAward
- "Charlie Kirk dog poop" | Google Trends
- "Again, I know this sounds insane, but you take a little dog poop, just a small amount, like half an ounce. Mix it up however you need to, I put mine in am milkshake and barely tasted it. I was completely cured within an hour." | r/HermanCainAward
- "Again, I know this sounds insane, but you take a little dog poop, just a small amount, like half an ounce. Mix it up however you need to, I put mine in am milkshake and barely tasted it. I was completely cured within an hour." | r/HermanCainAward
- Charlie Kirk discovers a cure for Covid that the mainstream medical establishment won’t tell you about | r/HermanCainAward
- Candace Owens ‘Cough Into My Fist’ Tweet
- Did Ben Shapiro Tweet That He and His Wife Know There Are More Important Things in Marriage Than ‘Sexual Satisfaction’?
- Charlie Kirk discovers a cure for Covid that the mainstream medical establishment won’t tell you about | r/HermanCainAward