#EndFathersDay Was Brought To You By Trolls

If you were paying attention to Twitter earlier today, you might have been more perplexed than usual by one of the trending hashtags. By midday, #EndFathersDay was awash with Proud Twitter Reasonables who simply couldn’t believe that Twitter Activists Had Gone Too Far in calling for Father’s Day — in supporters’ eyes, a sexist holiday that celebrates the patriarchy — to be abolished. Do People Have No Decency?

Turns out, this trending hashtag wasn’t the work of a misguided grad student with years spent fermenting in the internet social justice hive. It was 4Chan. It’s been 4Chan this whole time.

In fact, 4Chan has been trending deliberately trolly hashtags in an attempt to rile people up for awhile. #EndFathersDay was their work, but fake profiles created by denizens of the message board were also behind #WhiteWomenCantBeRaped and the totally made up Bikini Bridge thinspo campain from months ago.

(I just imagined reading that paragraph to my grandparents and having them neither understand nor care to understand any of the words contained therein. #GreatestGeneration)

As The Daily Dot reports, Proud Twitter Reasonables were quick to attribute the hashtag to ridiculous, hysterical feminists, which was the goal of the 4Chan campaign in the first place. But given the tenor of some Twitter Social Justice debates of late, I can’t say I blame anyone for believing that #EndFathersDay was legit.