Conspiracy theories have been around for a long time, and I have to admit that they are pretty entertaining. We’ve all heard conspiracy theories that were based around pop culture or other aspects of life. A couple of years ago, it was an online trend for some YouTubers to make videos surrounding conspiracy theories simply for entertainment. The theories would surround rumors about celebrities or about other things that would happen in pop culture. Now, with the hype of conspiracy theories raging in mainstream media, it seems as if society is beginning to take these theories more seriously, and since they are being taken more seriously, some of these theories have reached news stations and are being considered to be true. However, in the end, these theories are far-fetched and are believed to be not true by many.
Around 2016, Texas senator Ted Cruz was accused of being the Zodiac Killer. If you don’t know, the Zodiac Killer is a man suspected of killing at least five people in the San Francisco area in the late 1960s. This man would send letters to local newspaper outlets explaining the crimes that were committed, but he never got caught. Now, Ted Cruz got wrapped into this theory after a humorous tweet about one of Cruz’s speeches being titled “This is the Zodiac Speaking.” After this tweet, people started to run with the joke that Cruz was actually the killer. The internet made it into a meme by making videos and coming up with humorous tweets that alluded to the joke, and honestly, I remember them actually being kind of funny. However, soon after, the jokes started to become a bit too real, and thus, the zodiac killer meme turned into an actual conspiracy. News outlets began talking about it and people began to take it seriously. Although there has been some solid evidence of this theory being somewhat true, it is also constantly being debunked and has pretty much died down as of lately.
There are several conspiracy theories that have spawned from the Area 51 location. After all, everything is completely restricted. The facility is under 24-hour surveillance, employees arrive by airplane and the terminal is hidden. With all of these restrictions, there are bound to be some conspiracy theories that arrive from this location. One of them is the reporting of aliens. In 1989, a man named Robert Lazar claimed he worked on extraterrestrial technology inside Area 51, and although this man was discredited, it is still believed to be true that there are aliens hidden in Area 51 to this day. In recent years, this theory has reached mainstream media because people online have called to “raid Area 51.” In 2019, a group of people attempted to raid Area 51 in light of the conspiracy theories, and this entire thing reached news outlets and was outed to mainstream media.
I do not believe in these conspiracy theories that were assumed to be truthful in mainstream media. However, I do think it is super interesting to see how far rumors can travel and to see the type of people who are true believers of these theories. It’s entertaining to hear about conspiracy theories and perhaps thinking that, in the end, some of these conspiracies may not actually be just conspiracies.
