Sam Hyde | |
|---|---|
 Hyde in 2025 | |
| Born | Samuel Whitcomb Hyde April 16, 1985[1] |
| Education | Carnegie Mellon University Rhode Island School of Design (BFA) |
| Notable work | Million Dollar Extreme Presents: World Peace |
| Comedy career | |
| Years active | 2007–present |
| Medium | |
| Genres | |
| Subjects | |
| Website | mde |
Samuel Whitcomb Hyde (born April 16, 1985) is an American comedian and a co-founder of the sketch comedy group Million Dollar Extreme (MDE), alongside Nick Rochefort and Charls Carroll. MDE gained notoriety on YouTube for their provocative, anti-sketch style and public pranks, including trolling staged performances at conventions and comedy clubs that pushed social boundaries and courted controversy. Widespread public attention followed one such satirical TEDx talk.
Hyde and MDE created the television series Million Dollar Extreme Presents: World Peace, which aired on Adult Swim in 2016. The show featured surreal, boundary-pushing sketches that contained bigoted dog whistles, violence, and misogyny and quickly became polarizing, drawing both a dedicated fan base, especially amongst the alt-right, and significant criticism for its controversial content. The series was cancelled after one season, which Hyde attributed to his vocal support for Donald Trump, though others cited the show's offensive material as the primary reason for its termination. In 2023, Hyde created an interactive reality series called Fishtank.
Hyde is the subject of a recurring internet hoax in which he is falsely identified as the perpetrator of various mass shootings and terrorist attacks by online trolls, and he has played along with this hoax. His career has been defined by his willingness to provoke outrage through his transgressive style, by his political messaging and his financial support for neo-Nazi figure Andrew Anglin.
Life and career
Hyde was born in Fall River, Massachusetts, in 1985, and was raised in Wilton, Connecticut. After graduating from high school in 2003, he attended Carnegie Mellon University for one year[2] before transferring to the Rhode Island School of Design,[3] graduating in 2007 with a BFA in filmmaking.[citation needed]
Million Dollar Extreme
Hyde, along with fellow comedians Nick Rochefort and Charls Carroll, founded the sketch comedy group Million Dollar Extreme (MDE) in 2009 and began uploading videos to YouTube. The channel content consisted of pranks, iPhone monologues by Hyde, as well as "strategically offensive acts of (sometimes public) provocation and anti-sketches".[4] Pranks that were uploaded to the channel included Samurai Swordplay in a Digital Age, in which Hyde lampooned the American anime fandom under the pseudonym "Master Kenchiro Ichiimada" at a convention in Vermont, and Privileged White Male Triggers Oppressed Victims, Ban This Video Now and Block Him, in which Hyde read aloud several pages of homophobic 'research' at a comedy club in Brooklyn, prompting walkouts among the audience.[5][6]
TEDx Talk
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National attention focused on Hyde in 2013, when he was booked to deliver a talk at TEDx, titled "2070 Paradigm Shift", at Drexel University.[7] Hyde took the stage dressed in a maroon sweatsuit and Roman-style breastplate and greaves and delivered a speech in which he advocated for underwater vegetable farming, wiping Israel off the map, killing the elderly, and using trash as money.[8] The talk was described by Forbes as a satiric impersonation of a "Brooklyn tech hipster,"[7] and The Washington Post described it as subversive brilliance, interpreting the work as a takedown of the TED talk concept.[9]
Million Dollar Extreme Presents: World Peace
With this increased exposure, Adult Swim premiered a television program in August 2016, Million Dollar Extreme Presents: World Peace. The show was co-written by Hyde, and he acted in it along with the other members of MDE.[10]
The series consisted of six eleven-minute episodes that contained anti-sketches, surreal production design, amateur acting, and pranks. Set "in an almost present-day post-apocalyptic nightmare world",[11] the show satirized progressivism and anti-masculinity. Sketches were deliberately provocative, with characters being subjected to violence and verbal abuse. Hyde and Adult Swim emphasized the show's ironic nihilism, but journalists such as BuzzFeed's Joseph Bernstein drew attention to the show's popularity with the alt-right and raised concerns that the ironic nihilism contained dog whistles and could be, and was being, interpreted as racist, sexist, and antisemitic.[12] Following an internal battle in the Cartoon Network (the channel that hosts Adult Swim) over the show's content,[13] it was cancelled after one season.[14] Hyde alleged that this was due to his vocal support for Donald Trump.[15]
In an email to The Washington Post after the cancellation, Hyde stated that the show included "a secret signal to the KKK, which is actually where a lot of my YouTube ad revenue comes from"; he also insisted that he was not being sarcastic and that while he had kept the connection a secret, he could openly talk about the KKK once the show had been cancelled.[16] In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in the aftermath of his series' cancellation, when questioned if he held a bias towards minorities, Hyde replied: "No, I wouldn’t say that. I would say that I’m probably as racist or as biased as the average regular white guy or the average regular black guy."[6]
2017–present
In 2017, Hyde pledged $5,000 towards the legal defense fund of Andrew Anglin, the founder and editor of neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer.[17] The Southern Poverty Law Center sued Anglin for allegedly organizing a "troll storm" against a Jewish woman in Montana. When Matt Pearce of the Los Angeles Times questioned Hyde about the donation, Hyde asked Pearce if he was Jewish and went on to say that $5,000 was "nothing" to him. Hyde also stated: "Don't worry so much about money. Worry about if people start deciding to kill reporters. That's a quote. For the reason why, you can say I want reporters to know I make more money than them, especially Matt Pearce."[17]
Fishtank
In 2023, Hyde launched a live web show titled Fishtank (also known as fishtank.live), a 24/7 interactive reality show where a number of contestants cohabitate and interact with viewers in real time for six weeks.[18] The program has been compared to the Big Brother television franchise for its format,[19][20] while others have compared it to the Stanford prison experiment for its content.[21]
Misidentification hoaxes
Fans of MDE responded to the trolling content of the show by using photos of Hyde, its creator, to convince multiple media outlets of his involvement in mass shootings.[22] Hyde has played along with this as part of his anti-comedy stance.[23] Some have argued he instigated the hoaxes himself through troll Twitter accounts.[24]
The hoaxes, which typically included photos of Hyde brandishing a semi-automatic weapon and with a slightly altered name to appear more "authentic", reappeared so often on social media that The New York Times characterized "Sam Hyde is the shooter" as "an identifiable meme."[25]
The first instance of the prank was the 2015 Umpqua Community College shooting. CNN mistakenly included Hyde's image in their coverage of the shooting.[26] Hyde was also labelled as the perpetrator in high-profile shootings such as the Pulse nightclub shooting,[27][28] Sutherland Springs church shooting (where he was misidentified by Representative Vicente Gonzalez[29]) and the 2017 Las Vegas shooting.[26] Hyde has also been erroneously blamed for many other small-scale and large shootings,[23] such as the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Pennsylvania.[30]
Reception
Academics Matt Sienkiewicz and Nick Marx argue that Hyde's act is a form of trolling passed off as satire, where offensive statements can be made to evoke a suitable emotional backlash. In this way the response is itself performative. One group within the audience reacts to what they see, whereas the others in the audience become part of the trolling, enjoying the indignation they see in others.[31] Advocacy group Hope not Hate has described Hyde as a "far-right activist with a history of racism, homophobia, misogyny and spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories", and argues he uses "a veneer of satire to create uncertainty around his actual beliefs".[32] According to Sienkiewicz and Marx, as of 2024, Hyde had made it "increasingly hard to believe his anti-Semitism is anything short of sincere by continuously railing against Jewish comedians whom he believes conspire to blackball him", describing his 2017 donation to Andrew Anglin as "[saying] the quiet part out loud".[33]
Boxing
| Personal information | |
|---|---|
Nickname | The Candyman |
| Height | 6 ft 5 in (196 cm)[34] |
| Weight | Heavyweight |
| Boxing career | |
| Reach | 81 in (206 cm) |
| Stance | Orthodox |
Hyde enjoys boxing and helped train Canadian YouTuber Harley Morenstein for iDubbbz's charity boxing event, Creator Clash. On August 27, 2022, Hyde made his boxing debut, defeating Australian social media star James "IAmThmpsn" Thompson during the 2 Fights 1 Night event.[35] Throughout fight week press conferences, Hyde adopted an Irish persona dubbed "The Candyman". In this persona, he spoke in a thick Irish accent, wore bizarre Irish-related clothing and a mask, and read candy-centric poems. Hyde defeated Thompson in the third round by TKO. After the fight, Hyde called out left-wing Twitch streamer Hasan Piker by threatening to murder him at his house while remaining in character as the Candyman, saying, "I am going to stalk him and become obsessed with him, and wear his makeup, and his dresses, and use his skin as a coat like the ancient Irish did."[36]
He later went on to train comedy rapper Tyler Cassidy for his match against Chris Ray Gun for the second Creator Clash, scheduled for April 15, 2023. Weeks prior to the event, Cassidy was removed from the lineup of fighters, with William Haynes taking his place, sparking controversy and boycotts from fans of both Hyde and Cassidy.[37] Cassidy accused iDubbbz of removing him from the card due to his friendship with Hyde.[38] According to Cassidy and many fans of both creators, a potential major factor was that he had previously made jokes about subscribing to iDubbbz's wife's OnlyFans.[39]
Publications
Books
- How to BOMB the U. S. Gov't: The OFFICIAL Primo Strategy Guide to the Collapse of Western Civilization, with Nick Rochefort and Charls "Coors" Carroll. COM98 LLC (2016). ISBN 0997917601, 978-0997917604.[40]
Filmography
Television
- Million Dollar Extreme Presents: World Peace (2016, 6 episodes) – various, creator, screenwriter, producer[41][42]
- Million Dollar Extreme Presents: Extreme Peace (2025, 6 episodes)[citation needed]
References
- ^ "Sam Hyde (@Night_0f_Fire)". Twitter. Archived from the original on November 19, 2016. Retrieved November 22, 2024.
- ^ Rullo, David (March 31, 2025). "Alt-Right comedian to appear at Hop Farm Brewing Company". jewishchronicle.timesofisrael.com. Archived from the original on April 30, 2025. Retrieved April 29, 2025.
- ^ Bernstein, Joseph (August 25, 2016). "The Alt-Right Has Its Very Own TV Show On Adult Swim". BuzzFeed News. Archived from the original on September 12, 2020. Retrieved September 10, 2020.
- ^ Williams, Christian (April 23, 2013). "Take in the work of the comedy provocateurs in Million Dollar Extreme". AV Club. Archived from the original on January 14, 2025. Retrieved May 7, 2025.
- ^ "GamerGate's Archvillain Is Really A Trolling Sketch Comedian". BuzzFeed. February 24, 2015. Archived from the original on May 18, 2022. Retrieved July 17, 2017.
- ^ a b Abramovitch, Seth (December 8, 2016). "Sam Hyde Speaks: Meet the Man Behind Adult Swim's Canceled "Alt-Right" Comedy Show (Exclusive)". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on October 4, 2024. Retrieved October 3, 2024.
- ^ a b "How 4chan Tricked The Internet Into Believing This Comedian Is A Mass Shooter". Forbes. Archived from the original on June 3, 2016. Retrieved October 12, 2016.
- ^ Sienkiewicz & Marx 2024, p. 157.
- ^ Petri, Alexandra (October 13, 2013). "The most glorious TED Talk takedown you will witness before 2070". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on October 17, 2013. Retrieved June 7, 2023.
- ^ "Adult Swim Announces New Shows, Specials, and Pilots from John Kraskinski, Brett Gelman, Dan Harmon, and More". Splitsider. Archived from the original on October 25, 2016. Retrieved October 12, 2016.
- ^ Stanhope, Kate (May 7, 2015). "Adult Swim Upfront Slate Includes 12 Pilots, Two From 'Robot Chicken's' Seth Green". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on May 11, 2015. Retrieved December 2, 2016.
- ^ Sienkiewicz & Marx 2021, pp. 101–102.
- ^ Donovan, Dreyfuss & Friedberg 2022, p. 178.
- ^ Wright, Megh (December 5, 2016). "Adult Swim Cancels Its "Alt-Right" Show 'Million Dollar Extreme'". Vulture. Archived from the original on November 26, 2025. Retrieved May 3, 2025.
- ^ "'Million Dollar Extreme' creators say Adult Swim canceled their show for supporting Donald Trump". Fox News. December 12, 2016. Archived from the original on January 26, 2021. Retrieved December 30, 2016.
- ^ Weigel, David (December 23, 2016). "The story behind the sudden cancellation of Adult Swim's Trump-loving comedy show". Washington Post. Archived from the original on December 22, 2024. Retrieved October 1, 2024.
- ^ a b "Neo-Nazi website raises $150,000 to fight Southern Poverty Law Center lawsuit". Los Angeles Times. June 7, 2017. Archived from the original on February 1, 2023. Retrieved February 1, 2023.
- ^ Williams, Kenneth (April 23, 2023). "What is Fishtank? A 24/7 stream contest gone rogue". win.gg. Archived from the original on October 4, 2024. Retrieved November 14, 2024.
- ^ Begay, Mesha (May 8, 2023). "New Mexican man participates in 24/7 stream contest show 'Fishtank'". KOB.com. Archived from the original on January 20, 2024. Retrieved January 9, 2024.
- ^ Masiello, Shawna (May 12, 2023). "Fishtank: the best reality TV show that will never air". POPTOPIC. Archived from the original on January 20, 2024. Retrieved May 15, 2023.
- ^ Laghos, Mario (May 16, 2023). "Are we the fish? | The disturbing reality of Fishtank Live". whynow. Archived from the original on February 25, 2024. Retrieved May 19, 2023.
- ^ Aspray 2019, p. 155.
- ^ a b Webber 2018, p. 302.
- ^ Boatright et al. 2019, §6.
- ^ Bromwich, Jonah (November 6, 2017). "Sam Hyde and Other Hoaxes: False Information Trails Texas Shooting". The New York Times. Archived from the original on November 8, 2017. Retrieved November 14, 2017.
- ^ a b Bell, Chris (October 2, 2017). "Las Vegas: The fake photos shared after tragedies". BBC News. Archived from the original on July 20, 2018. Retrieved July 21, 2018.
- ^ Hicks, Liza (July 2019). "Watch: Why Sam Hyde Goes Viral After Every Mass Shooting". BuzzFeed. Archived from the original on June 13, 2023. Retrieved June 13, 2023.
- ^ Abraham, Ellie (March 28, 2023). "Why does a Sam Hyde meme go viral after every mass shooting?". www.indy100.com. Archived from the original on June 13, 2023. Retrieved June 13, 2023.
- ^ "WATCH: Rep. Vicente Gonzalez Says Sam Hyde Is Sutherland Springs Shooter". Heavy. November 5, 2017. Archived from the original on November 6, 2017. Retrieved November 14, 2017.
- ^ Gilbert 2025, p. 166.
- ^ Sienkiewicz & Marx 2024, p. 159.
- ^ Lawrence, David (September 12, 2022). "Sam Hyde: the antisemitic troll making a comeback through influencer boxing". Hope Not Hate. Archived from the original on October 7, 2023. Retrieved October 3, 2024.
- ^ Sienkiewicz & Marx 2024, p. 161.
- ^ HEAVYWEIGHTS COLLIDE | Sam Hyde vs. Iamthmpsn Full Fight (Video). YouTube: DAZNBoxing. August 28, 2022. Archived from the original on January 6, 2024. Retrieved January 6, 2024.
- ^ "KSI vs. Swarmz undercard: Complete list of fights before main event in 2022 YouTube boxing match". The Sporting News. August 24, 2022. Archived from the original on March 28, 2023. Retrieved March 27, 2023.
- ^ "The un-cancellation of Sam Hyde". UnHerd. August 31, 2022. Archived from the original on July 6, 2023. Retrieved July 5, 2023.
- ^ Tolentino, Daysia (April 11, 2023). "YouTubers square off in the boxing ring for Creator Clash 2". NBC News. Archived from the original on July 5, 2023. Retrieved July 5, 2023.
- ^ Cadorniga, Callie (March 29, 2023). "Froggy Fresh Will No Longer Be a Part of Creator Clash 2 — What's Going On?". Distractify. Archived from the original on July 6, 2023. Retrieved July 5, 2023.
- ^ Blisso (April 7, 2023). "The Creator Clash Meltdown | Froggy Fresh Drama Explained". Bliss Index. Archived from the original on November 21, 2023. Retrieved November 21, 2023.
- ^ "How To Bomb The US Gov't, Dummy". The Royal Studio. Archived from the original on January 11, 2024. Retrieved January 11, 2024.
- ^ Bernstein, Joseph (November 16, 2016). "Adult Swim Talent Want The Network To Cancel Its Alt-Right Comedy Show". BuzzFeed News. Archived from the original on November 21, 2017. Retrieved November 7, 2017.
- ^ Minsker, Evan; Phillips, Amy (December 8, 2016). "Bands Featured on Adult Swim's Cancelled "Million Dollar Extreme" Disavow Show". Pitchfork. Archived from the original on December 9, 2016. Retrieved November 8, 2016.
Bibliography
- Aspray, Benjamin (2019). "On Trolling as Comedic Method". Journal of Cinema and Media Studies. 58 (3): 154–160. ISSN 2578-4900. JSTOR 26742027. Archived from the original on June 12, 2025. Retrieved October 31, 2024.
- Boatright, Robert G.; Shaffer, Timothy J.; Sobieraj, Sarah; Young, Dannagal Goldthwaite (February 18, 2019). A Crisis of Civility?: Political Discourse and Its Discontents. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-351-05196-5.
- Donovan, Joan; Dreyfuss, Emily; Friedberg, Brian (September 20, 2022). Meme Wars: The Untold Story of the Online Battles Upending Democracy in America. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. ISBN 978-1-63557-864-5.
- Gilbert, Christopher J. (2025). When comedy goes wrong. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. ISBN 9780253072528.
- Jennings, Ken (May 29, 2018). Planet Funny: How Comedy Took Over Our Culture. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-1-5011-0061-1.
- Sienkiewicz, Matt; Marx, Nick (March 26, 2024). That's Not Funny: How the Right Makes Comedy Work for Them. Univ of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-40296-6.
- Sienkiewicz, Matt; Marx, Nick (2021). "Appropriating Irony: Conservative Comedy, Trump-Era Satire, and the Politics of Television Humor". JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies. 60 (4): 85–108. doi:10.1353/cj.2021.0046. ISSN 2578-4919. Archived from the original on May 4, 2025. Retrieved October 31, 2024.
- Webber, Julie A. (December 11, 2018). The Joke Is on Us: Political Comedy in (Late) Neoliberal Times. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1-4985-6985-9.
External links
| Artists | |
|---|---|
| People | |
| Other | |
- 21st-century American comedians
- American conspiracy theorists
- American male comedians
- American male film actors
- American male television actors
- American male television writers
- American people of Irish descent
- American people of Italian descent
- American performance artists
- American sketch comedians
- American stand-up comedians
- American television writers
- Carnegie Mellon University alumni
- Comedians from Connecticut
- Comedians from Massachusetts
- Internet hoaxes
- Internet memes introduced from the United States
- Living people
- People from Fall River, Massachusetts
- People from Wilton, Connecticut
- Rhode Island School of Design alumni
- Screenwriters from Massachusetts
- Wilton High School alumni
- YouTubers from Connecticut
- YouTubers from Massachusetts
