America's Alien UN Rep

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Part of a series on 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine. [View Related Entries]

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About

America's Alien UN Rep or United States UN Alien refers to an optical illusion that occurred during U.S. representative Linda Thomas-Greenfield's recent visit to the UN related to the 2022 Ukraine-Russia conflict in which the poor lighting and camera distortion made Thomas-Greenfield look otherworldly and alien-like. The moment became an exploitable and led to a series of edits showcasing the representative's poorly lit picture edited in various ways so as to prove her demonic or otherworldly origins, particularly on 4chan's /pol/ board.

Origin

On February 28th, 2022, a thread was made on 4chan's /pol/^[1] discussing the NBC News report^[2] regarding the UN council meeting held shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine. As the thread continued, users continued to speculate about the appearance of U.S. representative Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who looked like an otherworldly creature or alien in a screenshot provided by the OP (shown below).

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In the ensuing thread on February 28th, 2022, users discussed how the poor-quality lighting made the light reflecting off Thomas-Greenfield's head look like two eyes and her face, obscured by a black facemask, look like a mouth (example shown below).

Several more edits appeared over the following days, joking about Thomas-Greenfield being an alien. In a thread posted on March 3rd,^[3] more users began making crossover memes about Thomas-Greenfield being an alien by editing the scene into other images as an exploitable (examples shown below).