Are we alone in the universe? This question has floated around for as long as humans have existed. If we are not alone and aliens have visited Earth before, many people expect that the government is hiding evidence of this in Area 51 in Nevada. This suspicion has become so popular that Area 51 is more associated with aliens than being an intensely secretive Air Force base. Recently, this suspicion has been the driving force behind a popular meme.
The meme itself stemmed from a joke Facebook event titled “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us.” The original event was dated to take place on Sept. 20 from 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. local time. Before its original poster, Matty Roberts, took the event down, it gained over 2 million responses of “Going.” The popularity of the meme even caught the eye of the military, which issued a warning that lethal force would be used if the need arose.
If this warning was not enough, according to an interview Roberts did with USA Today, the FBI came to ask him lots of questions. Roberts worked with them to report anyone who tried to radicalize the joke event. He eventually got the idea to take the whole fiasco and turn it into a music festival titled “Alienstock.” However, Roberts eventually backed out of hosting the event in fear of it failing.
On the morning of when the event was supposed to occur, nearly 100 people gathered outside the gates of Area 51 according to The Guardian. Those who gathered chatted with guards and carried signs. Some of those in attendance even wore tinfoil hats and alien-related costumes. Later in the day, hundreds of people attended events like the proposed Alienstock, including “Area 51 Basecamp” in Hiko, Nevada, and festivals in Rachel and Las Vegas that laid claim to the Alienstock name. Each of these events included musical performances and even included activities such as an area where visitors got to pretend to break into Area 51. At the conclusion of all that went on during the day of the event, only two people were arrested; one for public urination and another for ducking under one of the Area 51 gates.
The “Storm Area 51” meme has spread far since its original posting in June, including to Winthrop. The university’s own mascot, Big Stuff, got it on the joke by posting on his official Instagram, the_real_wubigstuff, a video of him nearly being kidnapped by “aliens.” Students on campus were willing to give their thoughts on the event including English major, Tabitha Webb. Webb said, “I thought it was great. I was there for the memes, but I will admit it did get out of hand towards the end.” When asked if she would have attended given the means to, Webb responded with, “I would go just to watch.”
Thomas Roberts, an early childhood education major, believed that if the effort was put in, “we could [have] done better as a society. We could [have] taken over Area 51.” Roberts said he would have attended if he could have.
Graphic design major Shariq Turner-Carter thought the event as a whole was “very stupid. It was a stupid idea and it ended exactly as I expected it to: with no one fully committing to the idea.” He also made it very clear that he would not have attended the event.
With this meme blowing up as much as it did, even to the point it actually affected the world beyond the Internet in some capacity unlike similar Facebook joke events, it brings to question how far memes will go in the future. A simple joke post made in June blew up into actual festivals only a few months later. It remains to be seen if this is a one-off or the first of many memes to result in real-world events.
Graphic: Mars Hogue/ The Johnsonian
