The violence of online conspiracy theories

Abstract

This article investigates the relationship between online conspiracy theory communities and platformed violence through a case study of a conspiratorial harassment campaign against a Danish children’s TV show, Uncle Shrimp (DR, 2012–), and its main actor. Based on theories of violent extremism, conspiracism, and the participatory practices in online spaces of hybridized extremism, we aim to understand how the QAnon-adjacent Uncle Shrimp conspiracy theory is appropriated to fit a Danish context. We analyze 370 user comments and six posts from Facebook (N = 376), drawing on Berger’s four steps of group extremism: crisis narratives, in-group negotiations, out-group threats, and (violent) solutions. We found that users engage in conspiracy theory worldbuilding through a range of participatory practices and that the harassment campaign against the Uncle Shrimp actor emerged from the community shaped by mutual appreciation and forensic play alongside expressions of hate and platformed violence.

Introduction

Conspiracy theories co-produced and distributed by social media users play an increasingly central role in emerging forms of violent extremism online (Gartenstein-Ross et al., 2023). While some conspiracy theories are relatively harmless sources of entertainment to a diverse group of participants who try on identities and explore alternative explanations to various phenomena (de Wildt and Aupers, 2024), others turn violent through harassment campaigns and online vitriol (Wischerath et al., 2024).

For several months in 2023–2024, a community of Danish Facebook users engaged in a conspiracy theory-based harassment campaign against the title character of the Danish children’s TV show Uncle Shrimp (orig. Onkel Reje, DR, 2013–) and the actor who plays him. The campaign was informed by a QAnon-adjacent conspiracy theory which accused Uncle Shrimp of being a satanic deviant representing an elitist cabal working to groom Danish children for sexual abuse. The case illustrates how online conspiracism may inform a trajectory toward hostile action and violence.

Studies indicate that individuals who endorse conspiracy theories are more inclined to justify political violence (Moskalenko et al., 2024). Conspiracy theories may appeal to social media users with a wide range of opinions and convictions due to their perpetually adaptable narratives. This points to the trend of hybridization, which captures how extremists are increasingly motivated by a wide range of ideology fragments, disparate conspiratorial beliefs, and personal grievances (Jones and Comerford, 2023). Hybridization, we suggest, applies not only to the content of extremists’ motivations but also to the technological and aesthetic character of their communicative practices.

To better understand how social media-driven conspiracy theories enable threatening behavior, networked harassment (Marwick, 2021), and the legitimation of violence (Obaidi et al., 2022), we conduct a case study of the Uncle Shrimp harassment campaign and conspiracy theory. We depart from the following research question: How do online conspiracy theory communities devolve into platformed violence through collective worldbuilding and participatory practices? The study is based on a digital ethnography of a Danish conspiratorial community on Facebook and an analysis of 370 user comments and six posts (N = 376) by two dominating voices in the community. Inspired by Berger’s (2018) definition of extremism, we investigate how these users establish a crisis, negotiate the formation of the in-group, establish the threat of an out-group, and offer (sometimes violent) solutions as a response to their grievances. While a lot of overtly violent conspiracism is most prevalent on non-mainstream platforms (Zeng et al., 2022), we focus on the type of violence enabled through mainstream social media practices. Our analysis offers new empirical insight into how conspiracy narratives can turn violent, not through exceptional or extraordinary behavior, but through an intensification of the ordinary participatory practices of social media.

The Uncle Shrimp conspiracy theory and harassment campaign

In the spring of 2023, the Danish children’s TV show Uncle Shrimp became the center of attention and moral outrage in a community of conspiracy theorists on Facebook. A vocal group of users promoted a conspiracy theory that Uncle Shrimp was grooming its young audience (3- to 6-year-olds), suggesting that the actor playing Uncle Shrimp was a satanic deviant, and that the management of the Danish Broadcasting Company (DR), who produces the show, were themselves part of an elite cabal abusing children. The conspiracy theory turned into a harassment campaign against DR and the actor playing Uncle Shrimp, who received several threats. Following weeks of intense campaigning by the conspiratorial Facebook community, the Uncle Shrimp actor went on sick leave due to stress caused by the threats, hate, and defamation online. During this time, the case became a much-debated news story in mainstream media.

Part of what turned the studied community against Uncle Shrimp is also the very appeal of the character. He is a grown man who swears and farts, he cross-dresses, wears bikinis and butterfly wings, and entertains an infantile fascination with transgression of traditional parental norms. The speculations about Uncle Shrimp drew on the TV series narrative, but connected it to a wide catalog of globally distributed conspiratorial narratives familiar from Pizzagate, the subsequent QAnon conspiracy theory, and the anti-trans movement (Demuru, 2022; Reinhard, 2025).

Reviewing the history of conspiracy theories in Denmark, Rasmussen (2024: 63) describes a general trend of Americanization. In the case of the Uncle Shrimp conspiracy theory, many talking points were adapted from a particular American conspiracy discourse, for example, stories about a satanic, elitist cabal conspiring to groom and abuse children, to fit a context of public service broadcasting for children. Bridging a gap in the literature caused by a predominant focus on English-language contexts (Mahl et al., 2023), the case study illustrates how conspiracy theories on social media travel across geographical regions and are adapted to fit new local contexts.

The campaign against Uncle Shrimp was led by two “conspiracy theory entrepreneurs” (Harambam, 2020) operating as influencers with large followings on Facebook. We consider them influencers because their operating logic mirrors that of typical mainstream influencers, for example, cultivating large followings by being prolific posters on Facebook, in this case using current events (Bruns et al., 2020) to maintain their visibility and shape their particular “brand.” Their inclusion in legacy media coverage underpins their position as influencers.

Importantly, the conspiracy theory about Uncle Shrimp has not evolved into physical violence. However, other forms of platformed violence, including the threat of physical harm and harassment, is certainly present in the online community with severe consequences for the targeted actor beyond the virtual realm.

Theory

Violent socialization through extremist conspiracism

While not all conspiracy theorists are extremists, “extremists tend to be conspiracy theorists” (Cassam, 2021: 110). Having a “conspiracy mentality,” that is, subscribing to the basic “view of the world as determined by malicious plots hatched in secret” (Imhoff et al., 2022: 2), not only predicts a person’s belief in specific conspiracy theories (Strömbäck et al., 2024), it also constitutes a key aspect of the extremist mind-set. However, participants of a conspiratorial-extremist community online need not have extremist mindsets at the level of the individual. Instead, they may have “a group extremist mind-set in virtue of their joint commitment to imitate the behaviours of someone who has an individual extremist mind-set” (Malcolm, 2023: 5).

Moskalenko et al. (2024: 964) found in their study of the violent radicalization of QAnon followers that conspiratorial convictions “tend to correlate with a need to belong to a group,” indicating that socialization is just as important as the content of the particular conspiracy theory, ideology, or set of norms to which the particular group subscribes. The notion of group dynamics, that is, negotiations over who belongs to the in-group and who belongs to the out-group, is key to understanding the gradual transition from moral outrage and conspiracism to violent extremism. Although in-group formation is an important part of conspiracism, that is, the social activity of developing or promoting conspiracy theories (see Tuters and Willaert, 2022), it is the specific conception among its members of how that in-group relates to the out-group that defines the proximity to violent extremism. In Berger’s (2018: 44) terms,

Extremism refers to the belief that an in-group’s success or survival can never be separated from the need for hostile action against an out-group. The hostile action must be part of the in-group’s definition of success. Hostile acts can range from verbal attacks and diminishment to discriminatory behaviour, violence and even genocide.

When an in-group perceives its survival to be contingent on damage done to an out-group, that in-group can be defined as extremist. The “solution” to the perceived out-group threat against the in-group is typically some kind of violence (Berger, 2018: 46).

In the present case, the kind of violence employed to destroy the out-group may be termed “online vitriol,” which covers phenomena like public harassment campaigns, shitstorms, and various online speech acts that “silence, threaten, or harm others” (Polak and Trottier, 2020: 14). This type of online violence may not only cause emotional distress and psychological damage to the victim because it is “not just that the words cause harm on their own”; rather, “harm is yielded in making those words so visibly linked to the reputation of a targeted victim” (Polak and Trottier, 2020: 15). Damage to a person’s reputation may bring “lasting and totalising consequences” (Trottier et al., 2025: 13), especially in a digital environment where social media posts remain searchable for an indefinite period. Social media harassment campaigns put victims in a vulnerable position by placing them as potentially “legitimate” targets of further harm. Once a public figure is linked to serious accusations such as grooming of children via claims made in a public space of discourse, anyone, including extremists or unstable individuals willing to engage in physical violence, becomes potential recipients of those claims. Although the most vocal online harassers may not necessarily attack their target beyond online vitriol, the mere incitement is a form of violence.

To be clear, not all conspiratorial communities lead to radicalization. The connection between participation in networked conspiracy theories and violent radicalization is a theoretical reduction, not a necessary linear causality (Wischerath et al., 2024). The point is, however, that conspiracy beliefs correlate with endorsements of violence: Conspiracy narratives can be an intervening factor, which may push individuals toward positive attitudes to using violence because these narratives “often provide an outlet for hostility and aggression” (Vegetti and Littvay, 2022: 22, original emphasis).

In addition, the employment of violent strategies is also, in the eyes of the self-ascribed in-group, a morally legitimate or necessary response to perceived moral and legal offenses (Trottier, 2020). This is similar to what Marwick (2021) labels “morally motivated networked harassment.” This occurs when “a member of a social network accuses a target of violating the network’s norms,” triggering network members to “send harassing messages to the target, reinforcing their adherence to the norm and signaling network membership” (Marwick, 2021: 4). Harassment and threats of violence, then, are not simply a question of pushing back against the perceived moral violations of an out-group but also a response that positions the harasser firmly within the in-group.

Although outrage and hate may be the main emotions around which an extremist-conspiracist community convenes, enjoyment, pleasure, and even love are also important emotional drivers (Olson, 2020). A recent study shows how far-right ecological settler movements take shape as “spaces of love” (Beyer and Weisskircher, 2024: 2), which offer a sense of collective acceptance of violent expressions. Similarly, Rea et al. (2024: 169) demonstrate how media users “form bonds” and reinforce conspiracy beliefs through “hate parties” in the comments section on YouTube where they seem less concerned with the target of their hate and more concerned with writing “for one another.”

This is not to say that group dynamics are detached from the content of the conspiracy theory at hand. For instance, when conspiracy beliefs revolve around the perceived abuse of children, which “evidently carries a heavy emotional load” (Frejborg and Pettersson, 2024: 1048), the othering of perceived adversaries is likely amplified because group membership becomes a matter of purity and absolute moral. The point is not that notions of moral purity or emotions of anger and resentment are problematic in and of themselves. The problem emerges when such emotions are “exaggerated, irrational or based on false beliefs about reality,” which are key extremist characteristics (Cassam, 2021: 100). In this way, conspiracism may turn into violent extremism.

Participatory practices in hybridized prefatory extremism communities

In conspiratorial communities centered around narratives of “protecting the children,” participants typically “blend personal testimonies with appeals to science, spirituality and the supernatural” (Frejborg and Pettersson, 2024: 1048). These characteristics mirror the emerging trend of hybridization in online extremism where ideologies, conspiracy beliefs, and personal grievances are mixed together in new hybrid extremist narratives. Also labeled “salad bar extremism” and “composite violent extremism” (both in Gartenstein-Ross et al., 2023), the trend frequently shows up in the social media activities of mass shooters, indicating that they increasingly appear to be motivated by a mix of seemingly disparate beliefs.

According to Jones and Comerford (2023), the hybridization trend “significantly lower[s] the barrier to participation for individuals into a potentially radicalizing environment.” The Danish Security and Intelligence Service emphasizes how hybridization is enabled by mainstream social media where “leading and agenda-setting individuals” spread conspiracy theories and “threat-inducing narratives” in a “loosely structured network” with no clear ideological center (DSIS, 2024: 30). Elsewhere, we have coined the phrase hybridized prefatory extremism, or HYPE, (Petersen and Johansen, 2025), to conceptualize the complex relationship between ideological fragmentation, conspiracism, and violent extremism on social media. Via mainstream social media content, actors, and practices, HYPE spaces frequently dabble with extremist narratives, representing a possible first step on a radicalization trajectory, that is, a prefatory stage. HYPE spaces, such as the QAnon movement, are highly textually and aesthetically malleable; they combine a broad range of narratives, for example, connecting COVID-19 misinformation and vaccine skepticism to conspiratorial notions of a deep state or a satanic global cabal led by Bill Gates (Demuru, 2022). Importantly, when studying HYPE spaces, it is useful to move beyond an isolated focus on extreme content and instead pay attention to their characteristics and types of practices. Although conspiracy theories about child abuse are serious in nature, the underlying logic of co-creating a conspiracy narrative is exploratory and sometimes even playful (de Wildt and Aupers, 2024).

Marwick and Partin (2024: 2536) have studied conspiratorial communities’ self-labeled practice of “baking” in which the “bakers” utilize “the participatory affordances of the social web to collectively construct knowledge that maintains the social and political cohesion of the conspiracy across time.” The baking practice points to a broader interpretive strategy in conspiracy theory communities where users take on the role of online sleuth. This practice is well-known in fan studies where the term “forensic fandom” describes how fans engage with complex television narratives through “research, collaboration, analysis, and interpretation” (Mittell, 2009). In the case of the Uncle Shrimp conspiracy, we perceive participants to engage in a form of similar forensic play (Petersen, 2025), which is centered around the interpretation of anything from social media posts to news stories and popular culture as potential “clues” in a mystery that participants can collectively solve. Forensic play is fundamentally collaborative and based on a crowd-sourcing logic of producing “evidence” to support and expand conspiracy theories (see Zeng and Schäfer, 2021).

Underlining the importance of socialization, the collaborative worldbuilding practices of conspiratorial communities illustrate how conspiracy theories may fulfill “an affective and ideological need for a shared sense of community” (Topinka, 2024: 2). The way in which the sense of community is cultivated in HYPE spaces is often through the expression of emotions. The most visible way in which such emotions turn violent is through calls to violent action, that is, the solutions suggested to remedy the perceived threat of the out-group. According to Berger (2018: 121–122), solutions constitute the final step in a four-step process which characterizes extremist groups: (1) defining the in-group, (2) defining the out-group, (3) defining the out-group as a threat, and (4) defining solutions to the threat. Inspired by this process, our analysis is focused on the identification of crisis narratives, in-group negotiations, definitions of out-group threats, and, sometimes violent, solutions suggested in the Danish Facebook community engaged in the Uncle Shrimp conspiracy theory.

Method

Practice-based digital ethnography

Our data collection began after the conspiracy theory on Facebook gained the attention of legacy media, starting May 3 2023. In a practice-based approach, we observed what users do as participants in a conspiracy theory-based community and “how technologies and material infrastructures become players in social relations” (Pink et al., 2016: 45).

We took an open digital ethnographic approach to identify patterns of practices, for example, affective expression through likes, emojis and symbols, memetic practices, and the use of images, hyperlinks, and live streams by users to position themselves as belonging to the community. By searching for “uncle shrimp” in the search bar on Facebook and moving through profiles and threads in a snowball fashion, we familiarized ourselves with the community engaged in the conspiracy theory and were able to identify central actors and popular threads. In this way, we navigated through a loosely formed network of open-profile users liking, sharing, and commenting on each other’s posts.

In the second phase, we collected posts and comments through screenshots on 3 May, and again on 13 March 2024, and 15 April 2024 when the conspiracy theory re-emerged in the same community. Reflecting the volatile nature of social media data, our data sample is essentially a snapshot as more comments have likely been added, and some deleted, after we collected data. All posts were publicly available, while also clearly addressed to a public. We have translated the posts into English with special attention to capturing their tone as precisely as possible. The translation makes identifying the original posters difficult, which strengthens their anonymity.

Coding the data

Our content analysis is based on n = 370 comments posted in response to six individual Facebook posts by two influencers (hereafter Influencer 1 and 2), who were leading the campaign against Uncle Shrimp on social media.

All data were anonymized both in order to avoid negative attention and limit potential harm against the commenting users but also as a way of minimizing the chances that the two influencers use the present study to further position themselves within their communities.

In the first phase of coding, we counted the number of unique users per thread and noted their gender. An average of 40 users were active in each thread, roughly three quarters were women and the remaining quarter men, based on the feminine/masculine character of their names. ¹

The code book used in the second phase of coding was based on the theoretical framework of violent extremism outlined above and informed by Berger’s (2018) four steps of group extremism. The four main coding categories were (1) crisis narrative, (2) in-group negotiations, (3) out-group threats, and (4) solutions.

The data coded in the crisis narrative category covered the six original posts (also included in the 376 total) made by the two influencers. In the category of in-group negotiations, we coded for expressions of support between commenting users and the general cultivation of the community. Identifications of “the enemy,” adjacent adversaries, negative callouts, gossip, and demonization of public figures and other users were coded as out-group threats. In the solutions category, we coded for direct calls to action and solutions suggested to solve the initial crisis. Calls to action were not necessarily violent but were generally focused on action to be taken beyond the comments sections on Facebook.

We added an additional fifth category of disruptions to capture comments which (likely intentionally) disrupted or derailed the coalescing narrative in the studied communities. Finally, other covers comments which did not fit in the remaining categories, for example, nonsensical or imperfectly documented comments. All categories were mutually exclusive: when more than one category applied to a comment, for example, both negotiating the in-group and identifying out-group elements, we noted the dominant function of the comment. All comments were coded twice by both authors. An intercoder reliability test resulted in a score of 0.87.

In the following, we illustrate our findings by quoting several defamatory, discriminatory, and abusive comments. Due to the offensive nature of this content, reader discretion is advised. Although the identity of the Uncle Shrimp actor is well-known in the Danish public sphere, we refrain from mentioning his name in accordance with the ethical considerations of consistent data anonymization. Ethical approval has been granted by the University of Copenhagen’s ethics committee.

Findings

The main claim of the Uncle Shrimp conspiracy theory is that the TV show and its title character are grooming Danish children. However, users consistently include other conspiracy theory narratives to support their evidence or to expand their worldbuilding beyond the local context. Thus, conspiracy theories about the New World Order, the Illuminati, Freemasons, and Pizzagate come up alongside mentions of COVID-19 vaccines, masks, and adrenochrome in the dataset. On the one hand, this indicates an ideological fragmentation in the community and, on the other hand, a narrative convergence underpinning a process of hybridization. In our analysis, we elaborate the quantitative findings from our dataset through qualitative insights into the specific practices, formats, and aesthetics that enable a path toward “ambiguously motivated” harassment and violence (Gartenstein-Ross et al., 2023: 3).

Figure 1 illustrates the distribution of crisis narratives, in-group negotiations, out-group threats, disruptions, and solutions. Nearly half the comments are concerned with identifying the out-group and the related threat (n = 175). Yet, the community was also significantly shaped by expressions of mutual support and affection in negotiating the boundaries of their community (n = 104). In addition, 57 comments were focused on offering a solution to the crisis, while 21 were disruptions, and 13 categorized as other.

Figure 1.

Distribution of comments across six categories.

Crisis narratives

Berger (2018: 122) describes how group radicalization occurs through the identification of a crisis: “The crisis cannot be temporary, conditional, or amenable to settlement. It must be perceived as inseparable from the existence of the out-group.” In this case, the crisis is entirely co-created by the community in question. Following a public performance in DR’s annual circus tour where the Uncle Shrimp character was playing with a “fart cannon,” some Danish Facebook users expressed outrage over such content being shown to young children. While some of the outrage resembled legitimate media criticism, a significant portion developed into a crisis narrative based on an emerging conspiracy theory.

In one post, Influencer 2 announces: “A SATANIC CULT IS BEING TAKEN DOWN RIGHT NOW ALL OVER THE WORLD” and continues: “a thing that is IMPORTANT to understand, is that Uncle Shrimp is part of the awakening.” Her post goes on to connect the Uncle Shrimp case to other local and global narratives, for example, the Jeffrey Epstein case. For Berger (2018: 99), the crisis is central in extremist movements because it calls for “an urgent response” in what he labels the “crisis-solution construct.” It is in the established crisis that the magnitude of the threat becomes poignant, so that a proportional (violent) solution may be legitimized (Berger, 2018: 99). The use of uppercase letters in her post underpins the urgency of this crisis, while also falling in line with “a broader trend of violent extremists with muddled beliefs” (Gartenstein-Ross et al., 2023: 4) by drawing on a repertoire of conspiracy theory narratives to “present their case.” This content hybridity is most visible in Influencer 2, who demonstrates a deep engagement with conspiracism:

[With] my many disclosures and links to Skull & Bones, Freemasons, other “secret” orders, grooming for pedophilia, promotion of Satanism . . . “HIDDEN” CODES AND MESSAGES about dark and grim things such as Adrenochrome, dismembering little boys, children in cages . . . boiled children . . . kidnapped children . . . DRAGS and Uncle Shrimp in full BDSM outfit . . .

In other instances, posts are phrased as cliffhangers according to formulas such as: “if you’re shocked about Uncle Shrimp . . . you’ll get the shock of your life when you find out . . .” (Influencer 2) and “more on that tomorrow” (Influencer 1). The crisis in these online communities serve not only to establish a crisis narrative, they are also “governed by the economic and celebrity logics that drive social media: to produce regular content keeping up the outrage” (Finlayson, 2023, pp. 36–37), cultivating “an ongoing relationship with subscribers.” The apparent “amalgamation of prejudices, grievances, and subcultures” (Gartenstein-Ross et al., 2023: 7) may be understood in a similar vein; as a response to the internal logic of social media (Topinka, 2024) and an urgency to stay visible in the algorithmic infrastructure.

In-group negotiations

The in-group negotiations are central to the collective understanding of the potential threat that the crisis poses. Nearly three in four participants in the studied community are women. Although some studies show that women are less likely than men to endorse conspiracy theories related to COVID-19 (Cassese et al., 2020), Frejborg and Pettersson’s (2024: 1037) study of female engagement in such conspiracy theories suggests that “feminine identities, and maternal identities in particular, play a key role in the mobilizing power of CTs.” The authors identify female subject positions anchored in motherhood, for example, the “roaring mother defending her children,” the mother “on a spiritual journey,” and mothers “as advocates for the abused” taking part in an awakening (Frejborg and Pettersson, 2024: 1041).

Similarly, the in-group boundaries in the Uncle Shrimp conspiracy theory community is established through the repeated support for both the original poster and for others commenting in the thread, for example, “Super work with this post and in general, keep it coming ,” “You are so cool. It’s good that someone dares to speak up,” “AWESOME. Thank you ,” and posting pictures and gifs depicting anything from spiritual goddesses rising from earth to “Super Mom” stickers. Through these aesthetic practices of using images and symbols in the comments, community members emphasize the role of motherhood and the personal awakening of the women speaking up about the perceived injustices against children, whom these mothers are uniquely positioned to protect. Positioning through motherhood is highly prevalent in our data as the community draws on “notions of empowerment, self-actualization, and sisterhood” (Frejborg and Pettersson, 2024: 1037) and emphasizes “the gendered authority of motherhood” (Reinhard, 2025: 46). It also offers insight into the hybridized characteristics of this Danish QAnon-adjacent community:

Amplified and exacerbated by the disruption of COVID-19 lockdowns, QAnon narratives moved through and across social media platforms to appeal not just to Republican supporters of Trump but also to traditionally left-leaning women, yogis, vegans, natural childbirth enthusiasts, and “mom influencers.” (Moskalenko et al., 2024: 965 our emphasis)

Spirituality is especially prevalent in the posts from Influencer 2, who frequently references awakenings or spiritual journeys, such as: “WE WILL RISE IN LIGHT, LOVE AND TOGETHERNESS. WE GOT THIS . LET LOVE RULE .” This resembles what Demuru (2022: 599–600) defines as “Pastel QAnon,” a QAnon subgroup characterized by “an aura of social empathy, love, and peacefulness,” which makes “[t]he fight against the deep state and the Satan-worshipping cabal lose[. . .] its violent tones,” turning it into “a demonstration of non-violent people concerned about the moral well-being of the world.”

These softer sentiments characterizing the in-group’s dynamics as dominated by mutual respect and support emphasizes that a significant part of HYPE communities is not about (prefatory) violent expressions but about community building as a “crucial part” of the “affective practices that help explain the public appeal” of extremist cultures (Beyer and Weisskircher, 2024: 3). In-group negotiations and dynamics are thus central to understanding why these communities “are successful in mobilizing support” (Beyer and Weisskircher, 2024: 3), by offering its members continuous companionship and emotional resonance. Another potentially mobilizing practice that appears in the data as several users offer stories of their own experiences of sexual abuse and childhood grooming and links these experiences to watching clips from Uncle Shrimp as a retraumatizing event. Without wanting to minimize the lived experiences of the users sharing their personal stories, it is notable that this interpretive repertoire is, especially in the hands of other users, weaponized to offer legitimacy to the conspiracy theory narrative of a secret satanic pedophile elite.

Out-group threats

Nearly half of the comments in our sample are focused on identifying out-group elements. Comments in this category work to demarcate and describe the perceived enemy, while also engaging in conspiracy theory worldbuilding by placing the out-group as central in a mystery that the in-group can solve. It is a practice of othering, based on the attribution of various negative features to individuals and groups perceived to represent an adversarial moral framework: “the moral violations named in the accusation position the accused as deviant because their behavior violates group norms” (Marwick, 2021: 3). Most comments are short expressions of emotional disgust, outrage, and name-calling directed at the individuals or institutions mentioned in the original influencer post or by other users. Other comments are elaborate contributions to the out-group construction and identification of adversarial narrative elements. For instance, in response to a suggested solution of “stopping DR,” one user commented, “[. . .] Still, there are many fans of that pedophile freak show, and one wonders why there are so many perverse and derailed individuals who defend this filth.” The Uncle Shrimp show and its fans are attributed features of moral decay, expressed through harsh language and extremely serious accusations. Another user concurs:

A great deal of the problem seems to be the DR Management, who wishes to spread sexual tendencies and pedophilia since they keep hiring this satanically deranged man whose only message is to [in]filtrate the kids’ innocence with twisted S&M sexuality and a pedophile, disturbed way of thinking.

In addition to the abstract construction of the out-group as the emblem of moral perversity and evil, several comments contribute to the crisis narrative by specifying members of the out-group. One user commented,

They want homo-children. In that way it becomes harder to reproduce. That is, fewer people on Earth. The ones who fall into the embrace of the satanists will forever be broken. Many of them with VENGEANCE and EVIL in mind. Some of them may not even survive. They are PRODUCING a generation of broken people. Ugh ugh ugh [. . .].

The user not only signals a homophobic sentiment, but adds to the crisis narrative a doomsday trope, suggesting that DR (or another vaguely defined elite entity, “they”) aims to depopulate Earth by spreading homosexuality. The catastrophizing, apocalyptic rhetoric is typical of extremist argumentation and a clear exhibition of an almost religious superconspiracy construction where a single TV show is ultimately linked to an evil scheme of depopulating the planet (see Barkun, 2013). Another comment claims that the goal of DR’s perceived grooming agenda is in fact to “prepare children for the pedophilia of Islam,” thereby adding Islam to the adversarial side of the narrative.

Thus, the constructed out-group threat is not only represented by Uncle Shrimp and DR. A vast collection, including the LGBTQ+ community, Islam, the political left, the World Health Organization, Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum, experts and the pharmaceutical industry, and a Danish radio host, who is attacked on the basis of his Jewish background, are also positioned as enemies. This identification of diverse out-group threats reveals an ideological hybridization (Petersen and Johansen, 2025). This compilation of threats creates a sense of omnipresent danger which might push HYPE communities further toward violent solutions.

Beyond the clear conspiratorial and overt racism in the comments, the purging of possible in-group members, who are deemed unworthy or insufficiently dedicated to the cause, is also part of constructing the out-group. In several of the threads, users disrupting the conspiracy theory-building by challenging the arguments and “evidence” produced are quickly silenced and submitted to the same out-group as Uncle Shrimp, for example, “[…] I am glad that you, who used to ‘hide’, have now been lured out and commented on my post, so I know who and what you are.” In this way, the in-group becomes immune to self-critique because any attempt to challenge the narrative submits users to the out-group.

Aside from the antagonistic outbursts, the identification of the out-group threat also takes place through forensic play. Here, seemingly any public piece of information serves as a potential clue waiting to be deciphered. In one thread, a user posts a screenshot from the actor playing Uncle Shrimp’s personal Instagram account from 2021 of a home baked Swiss roll alongside screenshots of an article on pedophile symbols. The implication is that the “spiral” at the end of the Swiss roll is signaling his affiliation with a pedophile ring. The same spiral is later identified on a picture with The Pope, a sheriff’s badge, a screenshot from a Disney movie, and brands of diapers and ice cream by other users suggesting the perceived extent of infiltration of the alleged ring. Similarly, other public images are zoomed in on and dissected to suss out evidence “hidden in plain sight.” Spirals, hand-gestures, clothes, colors, and subtle interior choices are pulled to the forefront of interpretation in this process of worldbuilding by “generating content collectively in a constant frenzy of editing, updating, and linking” (Mittell, 2009). One user links to a documentary about UK TV host and known sex offender Jimmy Savile, suggesting a perceived similarity to Uncle Shrimp. Other users link to videos from YouTube or Rumble on satanism and the satanic panic. Intimating perhaps a hint of selfreflection, one user posted the widely used Always Sunny in Philadelphia conspiracy theory meme as a response to their collaborative efforts but also emphasizing that being engaged in a HYPE community is a fun source of self-produced entertainment. While positive affective affirmations may establish in-group camaraderie, this type of forensic play may be a mobilizing force as “collective contributions can yield authoritative results” for others in the community (Mittell, 2009).

Similarly, another user posted an image of someone eating popcorn, emphasizing the amusement of a spectator watching as the conspiracy unravels.” Humor, Phillips and Milner (2017: 92) suggest, can be “highly social for the members of the ingroup” while simultaneously alienating members of the out-group. Although presented in the typical jokey and ambiguous tone, image memes “establish ethical and ideological ways of being in the world,” ultimately shaping how people perceive it and respond to it (Phillips and Milner, 2021: 21). The solutions of the HYPE community rest on both intense expressions of disgust and hatred but also on the playful and humorous practices of solidifying an out-group threat.

Solutions: from prefatory to violent extremism

Among possible solutions that extremist in-groups typically suggest to resolve the crisis caused by an out-group are verbal attacks, harassment, and discrimination (Berger, 2018). In the context of online campaigns, also reputation-destroying slander, libel, and doxxing may be perceived as solution-oriented actions.

In the studied community, several calls to action appear as possible solutions across the sample of comments. Many comments in this category are abstract suggestions, for example, “When the hell will someone get off the couch and say ‘enough is enough’ [. . .]” or ambiguous, vague, and potentially suggestive, or subtly violent, for example, that Uncle Shrimp, “Ought to be removed completely.” Several comments call for formalized types of action, including calls for petitions and open letters, calls for the filing of police charges against DR or Uncle Shrimp, and calls for lawsuits. One user comments in response to Influencer 1’s post: “SHAME ON DENMARK’S RADIO! Can we report them [to the police]? [. . .].” Influencer 1 replies “They’ve already been reported to the police. I did that last year. I started a campaign against DR back then. But the police are the henchmen of the state, so of course my report was dismissed.” Having taken the legal route in search for a solution in vain, the community is left to find “justice” through other means.

Several comments focus on solutions, which include the use of (violent) force, suggesting that the Uncle Shrimp actor “ought to be committed to a mental hospital for diagnostic investigation [. . .]” or that he “ought to be locked up.” Some of the comments directly suggest harassment in the physical realm: In one post, which was not included in the dataset, Influencer 1 suggested demonstrating in front of the private home of DR’s director general. Another user writes: “can’t wait to tear out ALL CEOs of the news media and the 179 satans [members of the Danish Parliament] from wherever they’ve been trying to hide.”

Most of the solution-oriented comments are phrased as indirect threats, stating for instance that “it’s GAME OVER” for Uncle Shrimp or “I’m sure that [a known Danish criminal, name removed] and Uncle Shrimp are in competent hands. Just like Jeffrey Epstein is .” The passive rhetoric indicates a sense of faith and inevitability, based on the community’s perceived place on the right side at the day of judgment. Other comments express similar beliefs in an inevitable judgment: “People don’t know what’s coming. DON’T LET THEM FOOL YOU!” and “Many of the people that have been part of an ugly and disturbing club and done terrible things have no choice now than to expose themselves”.

In addition to the more passive declarations of faith, several comments express extreme dedication to the cause. One user writes: “Whether or not I’m ruining the man’s life doesn’t matter. He is ruining many children’s minds and childish souls with that ‘show’ […] HE HAS ALREADY RUINED HIS OWN LIFE”. Another writes: “I’m absolutely not joking, [name removed]… I’m willing to lose almost anything.” Not only do these comments indicate that the users are willing to take great risks; it potentially signals an all-or-nothing approach to solving the crisis, that is, by any means possible.

This, combined with vitriolic language, a general orientation toward mobilization, and several vague calls to action, such as “[…] all of us must do something. Please get things going. It’s so terrible to watch and needs to be stopped” and “It’s despicable. Someone needs to do something”, the community leaves space for individuals to “ask themselves whether their actions in support of the [. . .] in-group are an adequate response to the crisis” (Berger, 2018: 125–126). This marks the point in which lone-wolf attackers may escalate to hostile action or physical violence. While most users in the community will remain firmly in the prefatory stages, the initial stages analyzed here take on a character which makes space for the acceptance or necessity of extremist violence on an individual level, reminding us that “[v]iolence hangs around [. . .] it lurks, ready to pounce when conditions are favorable” (Zelizer, 2023: 1388). In HYPE communities, shaped by ideological, platformed, practice-based, and aesthetic hybridity, such favorable conditions become manifest.

Conclusion

The culmination of QAnon’s influence in the attack on the US Congress on January 6 in 2021 highlights the significant threat of violence that online conspiracy theories pose to society by “violating social norms and threatening democratic core values” (Isbister et al., 2018). Our study of a Danish QAnon-adjacent community offers several insights about the practices that enable such trajectories toward violence.

First, expanding on previous findings (e.g. Marwick and Partin, 2024; de Wildt and Aupers, 2024), our study shows how networked conspiracy theory communities engage in collaborative word-building through participatory practices and that these communities have “eroded the boundaries [. . .] between ideologies and entertainment, fan-culture, self-help and other genres of public communication” (Finlayson, 2021: 17). Online extremist communities draw on genres, formats, and modes of communication familiar from other cultural spheres resulting in an ideological hybridity, which we label HYPE. In the present HYPE space, the ideological extremism is often subtle or unclear, as participants draw on a range of global conspiracy theory narratives and hate ideologies and apply them to a communicative context of social media, but as Berger (2018: 20) reminds us “such fused ideologies can be more complex and toxic than the sum of their parts.” Online spaces of hybridized extremism manifest through decentralized communities operating through ordinary, casual participatory practices, reconfiguring the landscape of violent extremism in the process.

Second, while these HYPE spaces depart from American conspiracy narratives, their anchoring in deeply local contexts appears crucial for their potential to mobilize movements toward violence. The local context of a TV show in a small nation offers a proximity by which participants may feel action is more doable. Unlike Hillary Clinton, who was targeted in the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, the actor playing Uncle Shrimp and DR are within reach both online and in their physical lives. Proximity may enhance a sense of urgency to solve an imminent crisis.

Third, part of the inherent hybridity of HYPE communities lies in how the crisis–solution construct (Berger, 2018) is communicated through playful forensic practices as participants take on the role of online sleuths identifying and deciphering clues. Humor and playfulness presents a specific challenge because it offers a sense of communal levity to the serious topic of child grooming, while also potentially mobilizing more participants into a space of disgust and outrage toward a targeted individual. Recognizing the use of playfulness and humor within communities of hate and harassment may help researchers and security practitioners identify and monitor potentially violent threats in conspiracy theory communities online. While the prefatory character of HYPE spaces means that they sometimes deflate before taking on the expressions of (violent) extremism, we are reminded that it is “impossible to parse where the embodied ends and the digital begins” (Phillips and Milner, 2017: 66–67). The violence of online harassment campaigns and vitriolic callouts is in large part constituted by the afferent risk and enhancement of vulnerability of the targeted public figures.