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We decided to take a look at accounts that use the Honkler/Clown Pepe meme as a userpic (example shown here). First problem: how do we gather a set of Twitter accounts with similar pictures?
cc: @ZellaQuixote
cc: @ZellaQuixote
We could train an image recognition model to find the Honkler images, but we'd need to already have a large set of examples. Instead, we took advantage of the fact that the meme has a very specific color scheme, and looked for images that shared it.
To test the color scheme, we transformed the image into a distribution of the colors used, normalized for brightness. Eight specific color tones (the Pepe green, red for the nose, and six colors of the rainbow) comprise the signature of the Honkler meme.
As a control group of sorts, here's the equivalent color distribution diagram for a photograph of @seanhannity.
We scored the userpics of 6175 accounts that follow one of 8 accounts with "Honkler" by degree of similarity between their color distribution and that of the baseline Honkler image. Here are 30 of those classified as Honklers; only one is an obvious false positive.
After removing false positives, we ended up with a set of 103 accounts with variants on the Honkler/Clown Pepe meme as avatars (this is not a comprehensive set of all such accounts). The meme was born fairly recently, and a recent spike in account creation dates reflects this.
What does the content of the Honkler accounts actually look like? The prominence of "white", "people", and "realDonaldTrump" in the text of their tweets smells an awful lot like #AltWankers.
The Honkler accounts tweet mostly right-wing hashtags (#MAGA, #QAnon, #WWG1WGA), although #YangGang is present as well. Interestingly, older propaganda hashtags such as #SpiritCooking and #ReleaseTheMemo also show up (chart based on most recent 3200 tweets from each account.)
What media sources do the Honkler accounts link? Reddit, Breitbart, Voice of Europe, ZeroHedge, and RT/Russia Today are the most popular, with a mix of right wing conspiracy and mainstream sites rounding out the remainder.
These 104 Honkler accounts don't appear to be automated, but that doesn't mean none are. Here's an earlier thread we did on one:
H/T @Jessbots for the lead.
