Josh fight

Josh fight
Date
  • April 24, 2021 (2021-04-24) (first event)
  • May 21, 2022 (2022-05-21)
Venue
  • Air Park, Lincoln, Nebraska, U.S. (2021)
  • Bowling Lake Park, Lincoln, Nebraska, U.S. (2022)
Organized byJosh Swain
Participants
  • 900+ (2021)
  • 200+ (2022)

The Josh fight was a viral Internet meme, mock fight, and charity fundraiser at Air Park in Lincoln, Nebraska, on April 24, 2021, with a second edition of the event occurring at Bowling Lake Park in Lincoln on May 21, 2022.

The event was originally conceived by a civil engineering student named Josh Swain from Tucson, Arizona, on April 24, 2020, due to boredom during COVID-19 lockdowns. It gained popularity after a screenshot of a Facebook Messenger group chat involving several users named Josh Swain spread widely on the Internet.

Swain encouraged participants of the chat to meet at a set of coordinates one year hence and fight for the right to use the name "Josh." The event, though initially intended as a joke, drew a crowd of nearly a thousand on the day of the event. The gathering was lighthearted and there was no actual violence involved. The Wall Street Journal wrote that the event became a "global news phenomenon,"[1] while a technology writer for The Guardian called it "perhaps the ultimate response to an online Doppelgänger."[2]

  1. ^ Gay, Jason (April 26, 2021). "The Day People Named Josh Fought in Nebraska". The Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Archived from the original on April 27, 2021. Retrieved April 27, 2021.
  2. ^ Hepworth, Shelley (February 25, 2022). "My inbox is piling up with spam again and my email doppelgänger is to blame". the Guardian. Retrieved March 3, 2022.