Samuel Whitcomb Hyde is an American comedian known for incorporating anti-Semitic, racist, and homophobic rants into his comedy routines.
Early life and Education
Hyde, born in Fall River, Massachusetts in 1985, grew up in Wilton, Connecticut. He completed his high school education at Wilton High School, graduating in 2003. After spending a year at Carnegie Mellon University, he transferred to the Rhode Island School of Design, where he graduated in 2007.
Career
In August 2016, “Million Dollar Extreme Presents: World Peace,” a television program co-written and acted in by Hyde alongside the other members of MDE, premiered on Adult Swim. Four months later, it was announced that the show would not be renewed for a second season. Hyde claimed the cancellation was due to his vocal support for Donald Trump.
In a December 2016 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, following the show’s cancellation, Hyde was asked if he was biased towards minorities. He responded, “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.”
In 2017, Hyde pledged $5,000 to the legal defense fund of Andrew Anglin, the founder and editor of the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer. The Southern Poverty Law Center had 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 remarked 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.”
Hyde has expressed an interest in boxing and helped train Jewish-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.
In April 2023, Hyde launched his live reality TV web show, “Fishtank” (also known as fishtank.live), an interactive reality show where contestants cohabitate and interact with viewers in real time for six weeks. The program has been compared to the “Big Brother” television franchise and to the Stanford prison experiment due to its content.
Season 1 of “Fishtank” began on April 18, 2023, with eight contestants, while Season 2 started on December 18, 2023, with ten contestants. Filming took place in Cumberland, Rhode Island.
On January 11, 2024, Jeff Mutter, the mayor of Cumberland, announced that local authorities were investigating possible actions in response to complaints about the show filming in a residential area. Three weeks later, on January 27, ten chickens purchased from a poultry shop in Federal Hill were rescued by a local animal sanctuary after reportedly being released in the house “for a comedy bit.” Patrick Cole, a spokesman for the Tiverton-based sanctuary, claimed that the show’s producers had considered abandoning the animals before demolition work began in the house and later contacted the sanctuary for help.
Boxing
In the weeks leading up to Creator Clash, Harley Morenstein of Epic Meal Time trained with Sam Hyde, sparring in a parking lot in Rhode Island between sessions with his coach, Jessy Thompson. This training was documented in a four-part vlog series on the Epic Meal Time channel, leading up to Morenstein’s fight against Arin Hanson of Game Grumps.
Later, Hyde trained comedy rapper Tyler Cassidy for his match against Chris Ray Gun in the second Creator Clash, scheduled for April 15, 2023. Cassidy was removed from the lineup weeks before the event, replaced by William Haynes, causing controversy and boycotts from fans of both Hyde and Cassidy. Cassidy claimed that iDubbbz removed him due to personal grudges against Hyde from filming the documentary “Getting Away With It.” Cassidy and many fans speculated that his removal was influenced by jokes Cassidy made about subscribing to iDubbbz’s wife’s OnlyFans. In a video titled “Addressing the Froggy Fresh Drama,” iDubbbz criticized Hyde for relentlessly harassing him, his wife Anisa Jomha, and other influencers who participated in Creator Clash, including Nathan Barnatt.
Signed to Happy Punch Promotions, Hyde made his boxing debut on the undercard of KSI’s “2 Fighters, 1 Night” event against Australian TikTok violinist James “IAmThmpsn” Thompson. Throughout the fight week press conferences, Hyde adopted an Irish persona called “The Candyman,” speaking in a thick Irish accent, wearing eccentric Irish-themed clothing, and reciting candy-themed poems to intimidate Thompson, generating hype for the match. On August 27, 2022, Hyde defeated Thompson by TKO in the third round. After the fight, while still in character as the Candyman, Hyde called out left-wing Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, threatening to murder him at his house and 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.”
Controversies
In 2012, Hyde mocked American anime fandom by giving a fake presentation titled “Samurai Swordplay in a Digital Age” under the pseudonym “Master Kenchiro Ichiimada” at a convention in Vermont. An MDE affiliate blocked the exit to prevent attendees from leaving during Hyde’s hour-long performance. In 2013, Hyde, dressed in a maroon sweatsuit and hoplite-style armor, delivered a prank TEDx talk titled “2070 Paradigm Shift” at Drexel University. This talk, described by Forbes as a satirical take on a “Brooklyn tech hipster,” gained significant media attention and was praised by The Washington Post. Hyde explained that he disliked TED talks, calling them “really self-congratulatory.”
In 2014, Hyde launched a fake Kickstarter campaign to fund a “pony dating simulator” for bronies, adult male fans of the TV show “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.” The campaign described the simulator as “a journey that spans multiple continents” with “deep RPG elements.” Fans pledged $4,161 before Hyde canceled the fundraiser.
Since 2015, internet trolls on sites like 4chan and Twitter have frequently misidentified Hyde as the perpetrator of numerous mass shootings and terrorist attacks. These hoaxes typically feature photos of Hyde with a semi-automatic weapon and a slightly altered name to appear authentic. The New York Times noted that “Sam Hyde is the shooter” has become “an identifiable meme.”
The first notable instance of this prank occurred during the 2015 Umpqua Community College shooting, where CNN mistakenly included Hyde’s image in their coverage. Hyde was also falsely labeled as the perpetrator in several high-profile shootings, such as the Orlando Nightclub shooting, the Sutherland Springs church shooting (misidentified by Representative Vicente Gonzalez), and the 2017 Las Vegas shooting. His image has been wrongly associated with numerous other incidents, including the Waukesha Christmas parade attack in 2021, where he was misidentified as the driver.
In February 2022, an edited image of Hyde was circulated on social media, falsely identifying him as the “Ghost of Kyiv,” a mythical Ukrainian fighter pilot. This image was even shared by Representative Adam Kinzinger, with Hyde given the Ukrainian-style names ‘Сем Гайденко’ [Sam Haydenko] or Samuyil Hyde. The 2022 Buffalo shooter also used an image of Hyde in his manifesto. In July 2022, social media posts falsely claimed Hyde was the gunman in the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. In March 2023, an edited image depicting Hyde as a woman was used to falsely identify him as the shooter in the Covenant School shooting under the pseudonym Samantha Hyde.
Personal life
Hyde is a co-founder of the sketch comedy group Million Dollar Extreme, alongside Nick Rochefort and Charls Carroll. He has been heavily linked with the alt-right.
Net Worth
Undisclosed