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Ken Bone: Reddit comments show presidential debate hero thinks Trayvon Martin killing justified, posted NSFW comments

This could be the final chapter in a wild week for the living Internet meme

New York

Friday 14 October 2016 06:58 BST

Paul J Richards/Getty

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With only a red sweater and white tie, Ken Bone stole the hearts of Americans looking to avert their collective gaze from one of the nastiest presidential debates in recent memory.

But between Sunday and Thursday evenings, the country’s random, mustachioed hero experienced his fall from grace in the eyes of the very denizens of the Internet who facilitated the 34-year-old’s rapid rise to fame.

People love a guy called Kenneth Bone at the presidential debate

Mr Bone held a Reddit AMA Thursday night, revealing his handle, StanGibson18. This allowed access to his very active comment history on the discussion site, and it quickly became clear that he used his old Reddit account to answer the questions.

Thursday brought the beginnings of a backlash as Mr Bone posted an advertisement for the luxury car service UberSELECT on Twitter. He faced accusations of being a sellout, as critics marked the beginning of the end of Mr Bone’s Internet fame. The peek into his Reddit could very well be the final chapter in the Ken Bone saga.

In the comments, Mr Bone offers his insights to the 2014 leak of Jennifer Lawrence’s nude photos, declaring that “I saw her b*tt h*le. I liked it”; he was a regular participant in NSFW forums and referred to pregnant women as “beautiful human submarines”; and in a now-deleted post, he suggests the killing of Trayvon Martin was “justified”.

“It doesn't have to be one or the other view here,” Mr Bone wrote in a post captured by Gizmodo. “From what I read about the case, the shooting of Trayvon Martin was legally justified.”

George Zimmerman was acquitted in the killing of the unarmed teenager whom he followed before initiating the confrontation on the basis of Florida’s controversial Stand Your Ground law.

Mr Bone added that Zimmerman is a “big ole sh*t bird”.

“Bad guy legally kills kid in self defence,” he wrote. “Sucks for everybody, including us due to media f**kery.”

In a particularly prescient comment one year ago, Mr Bone imagined what his life would be like if covered by CNN, “when your small mistakes are sensationalised”.

“We’re getting a report that a Caucasian man in his mid-thirties has jsut walked into his kitchen and forgotten why for a third time in a half hour,” he wrote. “This stunning new revelation seems to prove the link between receding hair lines and Alzheimer’s disease.”

Imitating Wolf Blitzer, he added: “We’ve just learned from an anonymous source that he is also fat. StanGibson18 declined to comment, so we must assume that he is an … a**hole as well."