The Bikini Bridge hoax

JAN 05 2014

On 5 January 2014 4chan launched 'Operation Bikini Bridge', a two-pronged campaign that simultaneously promoted the 'bikini bridge' as an aspirational body trend and seeded outrage posts against it. Participants built fake Tumblrs and forged celebrity endorsement screenshots. The hashtag drew over 3,400 tweets in 48 hours and the Daily Mail covered it as a genuine 'disturbing selfie fad'. It is a template case of a manufactured trend engineered to provoke media coverage of a moral panic.