However, as neither US intelligence agencies nor journalists have managed to procure any conclusive evidence to back this theory, the ‘Russian hackers’ story quickly became the subject of numerous jokes and memes on social media like #Russiadidit, mocking the eagerness of some people to blame their own failures on some malicious foreign influence.
Many prominent comedians have also joined in on this trend.
While hosting the 2017 BAFTA award ceremony Fry, who earlier made several disparaging remarks about US President Donald Trump, apparently couldn’t help but mention those pesky Russian hackers as well.
"Let's find out who the Russians have decided have won," Fry joked as he was about to announce the first winner.
Earlier in January popular American comedian Jimmy Fallon made a similar remark while hosting the 74th Golden Globe Awards ceremony when he referred to Ernst & Young – the company in charge of handling the ballots during the ceremony – as "Ernst & Young & Putin."
And also in January The Late Show’s host Stephen Colbert brought up an incident when a C-Span broadcast of a Congressional session was suddenly interrupted by the RT news channel.
"It shocked C-Span’s audience – both of them," Colbert quipped.
He then went on to assure that nothing like that could happen on his show as he was confident that the CBS feed is secure when (all part of the act) the gag got interrupted in a similar fashion with a viral clip from Russian singer Eduard Khil ('Mr. Trololo') – the clip in question often considered the Russian version of Rickrolling – styled as an RT broadcast.
