A 4chan user seemingly leaked the news of the upcoming UK snap general election hours before it happened, revealing prime minister Theresa May’s announcement before the news had left Downing Street.
A user of the site’s /pol/ board, short for “Politically Incorrect” and notorious for the extreme political opinions held by many of its users, took to the site at 7:37am GMT on Tuesday and left the message: “There will be an election called today.” As we now know, May announced the snap election just after 11am, with most major news outlets reporting upon her mysterious announcement at around 10am. This means that either this 4chan user somehow got their hands on a very early news report that beat out the likes of The Guardian and The Telegraph, or they were privy to information that had evaded most political journalists.
Though this could have been written off as a coincidence, the user then offered more information that was later proven correct. At 7:46am, they wrote: “for june – strap yourselves in lads”. The election was announced for June 8.
The anonymous poster was then asked how they knew this information, to which they replied: “lol not telling – but ya senpai – its gonna be a slaughter”.
This could still be a big coincidence and the anonymous user might have simply made a very impressive guess regarding the day’s political events, but others have suggested that they may have been a whistleblower with connections to Downing Street who, in an act of defiance, decided to share their knowledge of the upcoming general election with the most controversial image board on the internet.
With the full anonymity granted to 4chan’s users, we’ll likely never find out who was behind this post, nor if they really had inside information pertaining to the election announcement. However, considering how closely guarded the news of the election was kept prior to its announcement, if this individual did guess May’s announcement then it’s curious that they were so accurate.
