No, this man did not use his Instagram fame to criticise China for "eating everything that moves"
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on February 11, 2020 at 14:35
- 5 min read
- By AFP South Africa, Tendai DUBE
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The image shows a man standing on a street corner holding up a cardboard poster that reads: “China Stop eating everything that moves.”
It appeared in this January 29 Facebook post where it has been shared at least 19,500 times.
A reverse image search of the picture reveals pages of similar photos, as well as a related link for the search term “guy with sign meme”. Clicking on this link opened up a January 28 Forbes article describing how the Instagram account “Dude With Sign” came about.
The “dude” in question is Seth Phillips, who is known for standing on street corners holding up posters with lighthearted messages “protesting” against innocuous issues.
His first post proclaimed: “STOP ‘REPLYING ALL’ TO COMPANY WIDE EMAILS”. Another one pleaded: “Stop wearing T-shirts of Bands You Don’t Listen To.”
Since the first post in October 2019, his account already boasts 4,8 million followers.
A common feature of his posters is that they are all handwritten, unlike the one that takes aim at China; the font on the doctored poster is clearly computer-generated.
The original image was posted on November 24, 2019, and the poster reads: "Stop Using Group Pics for your Dating Profile."
The reverse image search also revealed multiple platforms where the image has been used as a meme template -- a few examples appear below.
So why China?
AFP reported on Monday that the death toll from the novel coronavirus surged past 900 in mainland China, overtaking global fatalities in the 2002-03 SARS epidemic.
At least 39,800 people in China have now been infected by the virus, believed to have emerged late last year in Hubei's capital Wuhan, with experts linking its likely origin to the trade in wild animals.
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