There’s never been a better time to be a conspiracy theorist: government funded plans to dim the sun; a pop star embarking on a questionable space flight; supermarkets stripped bare after Spain and Portugal were plunged into a catastrophic blackout; Robot policemen on the streets of China; the US admitting to the existence of UFOs.
Like a lot of people my age, my gateway drug to the murky world of cover-ups was The X Files. For an hour each week, my young mind was exposed to alien abductions, secret societies, cannibal cults and paranormal phenomena. And my interest in the other worldly – and the people who wholeheartedly believe that humanity is being misled en masse – has never abated.
Since the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001, I have been an avid reader of conspiracy theories about all sorts of topics, from the ludicrous to the mundane. I’ve attended hush-hush meetings in pubs to watch engineers and architects discuss the temperature at which airplane fuel burns, had a numb bum as I sat through an eight-hour talk by David Icke about the ‘Reptilian agenda’, counted down to Doomsday (twice), and loitered on Alex Jones-backed forums where I learnt about Americans who were digging out bunkers and filling them with weapons, ammo, water purifiers and canned food for when SHTF.
And when I’m not doing that, I’ve been watching Ancient Aliens on The History Channel, chatting to flat earthers, and scouring eBay for out of print magazines and books about cryptozoology. These days, mind-bending conspiracies are just a few taps away, with Telegram groups, TikTok and YouTube turning your phone into a pulsating mass of unbridled paranoia. Despite the low level hum of doom that propels my daily life, my geekery of choice has long been reading about worst case scenarios, built on dubious facts with little credible evidence. Tolkien fans can keep their Middle Earth, the Hollow Earth theory is much more my vibe.
It’s important to draw a clear line between the things we’ve been exposed to in dystopian science fiction and a true conspiracy theory. By definition, the latter involves a plot carried out by a secret organisation – and crucially, the theories sometimes turn out to be true. Most recently, geoengineering conspiracists were punching the air when the Advanced Research and Innovation Agency (Aria) announced that they wanted to use solar radiation modification to try and ‘dim the Sun’ in a bid to tackle global warming and thicken arctic ice.
Weather modification has long been a conspiracists’ favoured topic. You’ve probably heard of chem trails, the thick, straight, lines of cloud-like vapour we often see criss-crossing the sky, and you’re likely to have heard people sharing their (unsubstantiated) beliefs that they are evidence that toxic cocktails are being fired into the atmosphere. Why is this supposedly done? Well, to placate society and make us unwell of course. The attempt to lessen the sun’s impact on our planet confirms that geoengineering is real – or at least being considered – and leaves one wondering weather chem trail spotters really are just loons.
I’ve read countless theories about the shady meteorological going-ons at the US military’s mysterious HAARP base in Alaska. Are their experiments on the Earth’s ionosphere behind freak weather events? Is weaponised weather being used by countries to target hostile states or distract enemies? So far, this kind of thing is still obviously a conspiracy theory. But it’s starting to seem like the technology, at least, is getting there.
For many years, Katy Perry has been caught up in numerous unfounded theories about being somehow connected to the Illuminati
Some of the most vivacious conspiracy theories focus on Ancient Egypt and the Pyramids. Beyond the puzzle of who (or what) built them, many conspiracists have argued that there are mind blowing secrets hidden beneath the sands. And it looks like they were right. In March, researchers published a paper that used radar imaging to show some kind of structure lying 4,000 feet below the pyramids, including eight vertical cylinders standing 2,100 feet tall.
But a wad of fresh ‘evidence’ is not enough for a long-running conspiracy to get a big fat FACT rubber stamped on it. Earlier this year, pop star Katy Perry was at the epicentre of a tornado of conspiracies after joining the crew of Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin mission, which took the singer and five women 66 miles above sea level to the Kármán line, the internationally recognised boundary of space, where they teetered in zero gravity for a few moments.
For many years, Katy Perry has been caught up in numerous unfounded theories about being somehow connected to the Illuminati (a clandestine organisation who really pull the strings of world governments, and who may or may not be Satan-worshipping reptiles). The evidence? Symbolism in her music videos and costumes which are allegedly favoured by the group and used in the drugs-based mind-control programme MK Ultra, which was developed by the CIA in the early 1960s.
Did Katy even go to space at all? Or was it all faked, like the 1969 Moon landing (allegedly)? Why did she cover one eye with a butterfly-shaped setlist for her forthcoming tour? Why does the New Shephard mission badge look like Baphomet from a distance? Did Katy kissing the goat-like emblem pre-flight symbolise her allegiance to the Dark Lord himself?
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