How Y2K initiated the era of conspiracy theories
It was 20 years ago. Longer. As 1999 careered towards the ultimate catastrophe at midnight on December 31, we became gripped with fear and a morbid curiosity.
Would the world end? Would all our computers start smoking? (Not cigarettes. Wires fizzing out).
Would our digital clocks suddenly turn into loud hailers and start instructing all the other electrical appliances and whiteware to take over the world?
Would all the automated teller machines suddenly stop working and lock our money behind heavy slamming steel doors
Would neighbours turn in to zombies and run around the streets screaming ‘‘I don’t know what time it is!!!’’.
Y2K was the pioneering conspiracy giant. It was our gateway conspiracy to the completely ludicrous conspiracies that were to come. JFK and the moon landing were just junior fledgling semi reasonable conspiracy babies (I scoff a scoffy snort as I write this). It was Y2K that got the whole crazy masses stirred up.
Travelling with friends to Taita, an IT Baffin in the back seat, we started reminiscing about the state of the world as we approached the end of the millennium. There was no Covid to worry about. Bill Clinton was president and his biggest concern was keeping his d... in his pants. It was like the entire world was only caught up worrying about a president’s sex life and all computers turning in to storm troopers and strangling up with vacuum cleaner cords. What a simple simple silly society, and yet . . .
And yet it was about to get crazier. I yearn for the days of being compared to Monica Lewinsky, and watching CNN experts debate the dawning of the apocalypse on January 1, 2000. So much air time to so called Y2K experts, who all nearly truly believed the IT empire would somehow explode, implode, self destruct, or send out some deadly virus on a pic of Britney Spears or the Teletubbies. I had one friend. Very smart man. Still a very, very smart man, who was hell bent on the Teletubbies feeding covert messages to children, and that one day Dipsy or Laa Laa would say the word and some revolution would start. I guess if that’s true, it shall happen fairly shortly. Might be about time for it.
Since the great fizzle of Y2K lots of way more ridiculous conspiracies have been pushed out on a lake in boats made of madness and tomfoolery. Including an alien lizard race. Admittedly they do have a strange gait to their walk, but that might just be from all that serious horse riding.
Then the flat earth era. I don’t know where to begin, and so I won’t. I’m not a fan of Columbus. We’ve all come to agree he was a bit of a ‘c’ word all round, but I trust him on the world being round or at least egg like. As long as I can get to Paris and not fall off the edge of the plate I’m all good.
Vaccinations. Don’t get me started. There is nothing on Earth that will make me this angry and possible violent.
And now, oh and this is delicious and demented . . . according to Qanon (no relation to Alanon), a right wing conspiracy ‘team’, there’s the belief that Osama bin Laden is not dead, but actually had a truly perfect body double, and this was all covered up by Seal Team 6. The real humour in this is that Trump retweeted it like some crazy old uncle you have around for Thanksgiving. Clinton and his Oval Office cavorting suddenly seem so sweet, don’t they?
So all of us, except a few who didn’t care or were Super Duper brains, waited for the doom to ensue when the clock struck midnight December 31 1999 and all we got was another Happy New Year, and the pioneering of all idiotic conspiracy theories to come.
If it turns out that Prince Andrew is a lizard and not a dirty rat, I shall get in my wake and sail to the edge of the Earth to find the real Osama bin Laden, and pick up Elvis on my way.