samefag

English

Etymology

From same +‎ -fag.

Noun

samefag (plural samefags)

1. (Internet slang, 4chan, vulgar) Someone who replies to their own post on 4chan pretending to be a different user.
   • 2014, The Legacy of Totalitarianism in a Tundra, Morrisville, N.C.: Lulu.com, →ISBN, page 448:

     The board (or possibly just a samefag?) had spoken: Tao Lin had won.

   • [2021, Lyndsay Michalik Gratch, Ariel Gratch, Digital Performance in Everyday Life, Abington, Oxfordshire: Routledge, →DOI, →ISBN, unnumbered page:

     One early adaptation, for example, which appeared on 4chan in 2012, adds only the homophobic slur "SAMEFAG" to the image—a term commonly used on 4chan to denote a person on the site who creates multiple posts by pretending to be multiple people.]

   • 2022, Dillon Ludemann, And Their Name Was Legion: Discourse and Politics on 4chan’s /Pol/ Board (thesis)‎^[1], page 51:

     On /pol/, 4chan discursive practices, such as the calling out and isolation of an accused or alleged "samefag," become complicated processes. Though on other boards that have neither flags nor thread IDs, there are still processes by which a user distinguishes that they are not samefagging, on /pol/ there is often a much more concerted effort to engage with these accusations. The samefag accusation is a common one within 4chan, and this example highlights common response and insult chains between these two (or more) users.

Derived terms

• samefagging

 

See also

• sock puppet

 

Further reading

• “samefag”, in Urban Dictionary, launched 1999.