Almost everyone wants the government holding captured aliens and ships to come clean on secrets and offer full disclosure.  Even President Eisenhower allegedly wanted to use the US Army to storm Area 51 when they denied him information.  So it’s totally understandable that millions of people would be willing to do something to bust out ET and force out evidence of alien contact, right?  Not so fast, Vox’s July 12 article explains:

A jokey Facebook event has gone viral thanks to the power of shitposting.

“Amid its many failings, Facebook remains good for two things: sending birthday greetings to people you haven’t talked to in years, and sharing hilariously inane jokes. Nowhere has that been better exemplified by a public Facebook event that’s gone viral due to its bizarre, intentionally meme-friendly premise. More than 550,000 people have RSVP’d to ambush Nevada’s famed Area 51 this September, an affair whose jokey premise is so deadpan, it’s has gained some serious mainstream attention.

Early in the week of July 1, the anonymous administrators of the public meme page “Shitposting cause im in shambles” teamed up with a Twitch video game streamer named SmyleeKun to organize an event called “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us.” Per the event description, attendees are invited to fly out to Lincoln Country, Nevada, and “all meet up at the Area 51 Alien Center tourist attraction and coordinate our entry” at 3 am Pacific on September 20. The goal is apparently to break into the highly secretive and secure military compound, which has often been characterized in fiction as a place where the US government houses and researches alien technology. The thinking goes that if a bunch of people head toward the high-security base at once, the military won’t stand a chance of stopping them.

For added measure, the event description notes, “If we naruto run” — a reference to a highly particular, frequently meme’d style of running from the long-running anime Naruto — “we can move faster than their bullets. Lets see them aliens.”

The “Storm Area 51” event has gained traction online for its absurdity, drawing reactions across multiple social media platforms. On Twitter, for example, one post that omitted the creators’ names — which make it clear that the event is just a high-concept gag — led people who were unfamiliar with its origins to take the idea quite seriously:

But some serious news outlets have tried to report on the event as if it is something other than a gag assembled by some Very Online twentysomethings for the entertainment of their Very Online peers who love scrolling through memes for hours….

This ridiculous “event” is shitposting at its biggest and best

The beauty of shitposts, commonly found on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Reddit, and pretty much anywhere else millennials have been known to waste time online — lies in how highly shareable they are. Shamelessly silly, these memes are funny mostly for being intentionally lazy, even nonsensical, which makes them good for an eyeroll, snort, and bemused repost to your own page. When you’re browsing through a feed as disorganized as Facebook’s can be, there’s sometimes nothing better than stumbling upon a quick, easy joke.”

But even this joke could be part of the government’s very long term (70 year plus) plan to gradually acclimate the public into accepting the idea that aliens exist, and take the anticipated reaction from:

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I wish I could reverse that on the topic of catastrophic pole shifts.  We’re due for another civilization-ender soon, and instead of panic, or preparation, or even concern, it seems like the reaction is “meh” or “who cares?”

Maybe the aliens will save us from it.

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