I remember, growing up in the 80s, I’d check out books from my school library about various conspiracies and cryptids: Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, UFOs, ancient astronauts, ghosts, Atlantis. Some of my favorite Choose Your Own Adventure books featured such things as their main story element. These seemed like fun ‘what if’ scenarios, hinting to my young mind that we hadn’t fully explored our universe; that there were still things out there we didn’t understand. While I agree with that sentiment as an adult, I do so through the lens of science, instead of modern myths and conspiracy theories. Those things used to be fun but silly distractions, the subject of corny, late night documentaries, or sharing shelf space with titles about ESP and crystal magic in the bookstore. Even as a kid I only took these things seriously for a brief time, then life moved on, and such phenomena never appeared with any trace of concrete evidence. They were as much a modern myth as Batman or Nazi bases in Antarctica.
I wonder if those seemingly harmless esoteric subjects were merely the tip of the iceberg, of something truly awful growing beneath the surface of our society. Bigfoot, UFOs, and the Illuminati were gateway drugs into the darker recesses of lies and pseudoscience that have always been there, but have now gained dangerous traction in the 21st century.
