The passage in question appeared in a story by Frances Robles that was posted on nytimes.com on Saturday. The anatomy of how the hoax was perpetrated was outlined in an article on fusion.net.

The passage read:

“Benjamin Wareing, a blogger in Britain, said the writings (in the Charleston shooter’s online manifesto) are nearly identical to blog posts that Mr. Roof posted several months ago on a separate Tumblr page. Mr. Wareing was preparing to write an essay on the dangers of Tumblr and troubled youths, so he took notes on the writings.

” ‘He just made really stupid but obvious statements about people from other races,’ Mr. Wareing said in an email. ‘He would call black citizens ‘nuggets’ and such. He never made direct threats at all on Tumblr, at least it didn’t seem like that, just weird ramblings about how he felt he ‘didn’t fit in.’

“Among his writings were images of 9/11 ‘memes’ and of My Little Pony, Mr. Wareing said.”

Trouble was, the story was total fiction.