Category File
Social Media
2 documented theories filed under this subject.
- The National Butterfly CenterA hundred-acre butterfly sanctuary outside Mission, Texas went to court over a border wall crossing its land, and was then described in public as a front for human trafficking by the founder of the organisation building a private fence nearby. No law enforcement investigation of the center or its staff ever followed. The sanctuary closed its gates in early 2022 under the weight of threats, and in the spring of that year the man who made the claims pleaded guilty to federal fraud in an unrelated case over the fence's donors.
- The Dead Internet TheoryImperva’s 2023 Bad Bot Report found that 47.4% of internet traffic in 2022 was automated. The theory built on that number goes considerably further: that since around 2016 the social web has been so saturated with bots and machine-generated content that most of the people on it are not people, kept that way by states and platforms to steer opinion.
- FrazzledripA claim that surfaced in April 2018 holding that a video recovered from Anthony Weiner's seized laptop showed Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin assaulting a child.
- The Joe Felz Archive and the '72 Hours' ClaimJoe Felz was digitising rare Bibles and sacred texts in Costa Rica when he died in August 2026. No cause of death has been released. A claim that he died seventy-two hours before publishing the archive spread within days — and sites using his name now gate the promised books behind a TikTok live stream.
- Project Anchor and the Seven-Second Gravity BlackoutBeginning in late 2024 on Instagram and TikTok, and building through 2025 and 2026, a claim spread that a suppressed NASA program called "Project Anchor" had calculated the exact moment Earth's gravity would fail — seven seconds on August 12, 2026, during a real total solar eclipse. Circulating versions described a leaked internal document, an alignment of the Sun, Moon and Earth producing gravitational interference, and projected casualties in the millions. No document matching the description appears in NASA's Technical Reports Server or public archives, and a NASA spokesperson stated that Earth will not lose gravity on that date. The eclipse itself is real and crosses Greenland, Iceland and northern Spain.
- Emotional "Farming" via Viral TrendsA theory claiming that absurdist, “brain rot,” or cringe-heavy viral trends are not merely accidental meme culture but deliberate emotional stress tests. In this narrative, platforms use surreal and increasingly uncomfortable content to measure tolerance for confusion, secondhand embarrassment, and social overstimulation, harvesting data on how much emotional distortion audiences can absorb before disengaging.
- Algorithmic GaslightingA theory claiming that social platforms are not only resurfacing memories but quietly altering them—through AI-edited old photos, suggested collages, and manipulated “On This Day” style prompts—to make users doubt or reinterpret their own past. In this framework, memory curation becomes memory rewriting.
- The Selfie (2013) as DNA CaptureThe Selfie (2013) as DNA Capture theory claimed that the explosive rise of selfie culture was not only about narcissism, smartphones, or social media identity, but about training people to provide highly useful biometric and musculature data. In its most specific form, the theory held that exaggerated poses such as duck face helped map the fine facial structures associated with speech and vocal production.