- How the hell did a joke on Facebook
lead to a real life anime inspired invasion
of a top secret military base
that ended in three separate concerts?
Find out right now on this show.
You literally don't have to do anything.
Let's do it.
- Let's debunk this.
(upbeat music)
- In the summer of 2019 most of us saw
the sudden influx of memes about storming Area 51,
and some of us were among the over 2 million people
who responded I'm going to the Facebook event.
Yes, Facebook, the same place where
your grandma posts religious cartoons
spawned one of the biggest memes in 2019.
- This place just looks like dirt patches.
- It looks like an abandoned like farm.
- I wouldn't go there.
- It needs to be like pretty colors, roller coasters.
- There's like no subway there.
- So Olivia, what do you know about Area 51?
- It's like aliens or something.
What does the 51 stand for?
Is it just any number?
- I think they have like a bunch of areas.
So like area 30.
- What?
- I bet area 10 is lit.
- The fact that I don't know anything about it,
it's on our earth, I should probably know more about it,
but I think that's what the government wants me to not know.
- It's so complicated, but what's not complicated is Google.
And it's basically a highly classified
United States Air Force base in the middle of
(bleep) nowhere Nevada.
It was established by the CIA in 1955.
The facility is officially a training range,
but all the research and occurrences in Area 51
are considered top secret, sensitive information
by the CIA.
- If it's gonna be top secret CIA stuff,
like name it something normal like Dairy Queen Stop.
Like, I don't know, like hide it or something.
- Super DMV.
- Toxic tar pits.
- "The Simpsons" aint ever lied to me.
Everyone says "The Simpsons" predicts everything.
- What if they're the government?
- This leaves conspiracy theorists and UFO enthusiasts
to speculate as to what exactly happens at Area 51,
with the most popular claim being that the site
hosts an alien spacecraft and the bodies of its pilots
after they crashed at Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947.
- Hold on.
Just one alien spacecraft?
- Just one.
After all these years.
I like to think about the fact that maybe
on their planet somewhere,
they have this super serious secret base
and inside they have a Honda Civic.
- But what does baby Yoda have to do with anything?
- Baby Yoda's an alien.
I mean, on his own planet he's not.
- I just think the word alien means various things.
- It's a very loaded word.
- The thing that's growing on my toe.
- That's alien to you.
- That's alien, it's another life form.
- So, with all that in mind, on June 27th 2019,
a 21 year old by the name of Matty Roberts from Bakersfield
created a Facebook event called storm Area 51,
they can't stop all of us.
The obvious (bleep) post included a very specific plan.
We will all meet up at the Area 51 Alien Center
tourist attraction and coordinate our entry.
If we Naruto run, we can move faster than their bullets.
Let's see them aliens.
- Area 51 seems like a place with a lot of dust.
So I think Naruto running would actually be
really bad for your lungs.
- But also look super epic.
Look at the color coding.
- Okay, Kyles.
(laughing)
Rock throwers, Naruto.
Oh my God.
This is amazing.
- I love that the rock throwers are like
their big attack method.
- I don't fit in anywhere here.
- Yeah, where is our-
- I guess we're the Naruto runners.
- So the event started picking up traction on July 1st
and even more after it was posted on Reddit on July 2nd.
But over the next few days,
news outlets began to pick up the story
and that's when the event absolutely blew up,
and the memes started rolling in.
- The aliens at #Area51 waiting for the we outside text.
How do you guys know the aliens have big heads like this
and small bodies?
They could look like this,
a normal, healthy Asian American woman.
- The alien I stole from Area 51 showing up in my room
at 3:00 a.m. to tell me he threw up.
Aw!
- This is just a mirror of my five year old self.
I threw up.
- Oh my God, ew.
That is us.
That's like literally how you would sleep in Sacramento
when we film.
- Honestly, Naruto.
- Naruto! - I get it.
People took time off from work.
I wish people cared about me that much.
- Do you have any history of mental illness in your family?
- I have an uncle who tried to swarm Area 51
to have sex with aliens.
- There's nothing wrong with that.
- We are such simps for aliens.
We would be lucky to score a date with aliens.
- Seriously.
- You know when a meme has reached its peak
when brands start joining in.
Attention people storming Area 51,
if they tell you to bring them to your leader,
remember who's king.
- Ha!
- Pretty good.
- That's really good.
Is that weird that like, that just like turned me on?
(laughing)
- I just imagine like a burger talking to me.
- Wow, we're hungry now.
Burger King succeeded.
If any chip was gonna be an alien ship,
it'd be the one that's a circle.
- They know their brand.
- They do literally call themselves onion flavored rings.
So they're not even real onion.
That is suspicious.
Okay, you win Funyuns.
The whole thing was obviously meant to be a joke
since a ton of the memes were about clapping alien cheeks.
- What!
- Mm-hmm.
- Don't sexualize them.
- Yeah.
- And when did I become the ambassador for aliens?
- I think it's Drax.
But the Air Force issued a statement
warning people against visiting the secretive base,
saying that any attempt to illegally access the area
is highly discouraged.
- Okay, so they are hiding something.
- People took this so seriously that two Nevada counties
went into a state of emergency.
Or should I say meme-mergency.
(laughing)
Of course less than a hundred people actually showed up
because trespassing on a military base seems,
I don't know, dumb, scary.
- Yeah but also people are unreliable.
- Yeah.
The funniest part of Area 51 thing to me
is realizing somewhere in the Pentagon
had to explain to a general what a Naruto run is
with a straight face.
Anyway, Matty Roberts use the momentum
to create a real event,
a Burning Man type music festival in the desert.
He partnered with Connie West,
an in owner in Rachel, Nevada,
a town near Area 51 with only 54 residents.
By the way, the inn is called Little Aleinn.
- That's clever, okay.
- Dude, America's funny as (bleep).
And it took me an embarrassingly long time
to figure out how to pronounce that.
Meanwhile, the alien research center in a nearby town
by the name of Hiko, Nevada,
decided to host their own event that weekend
for serious UFO-ologists only.
They must've been the hottest looking group in history, man.
But 10 days before Alienstock,
Matty Robertson dropped out of the event
because he suddenly realized how poorly equipped
a town of 54 retirees would be to host a music festival.
Honestly, I just think he watched
one of the Fyre Fest documentaries
and wasn't ready to find his own Andy King.
- Who's Andy King?
- So he's the guy who offered a (bleep) job
in exchange for water.
Oh, choose your payment method.
- That's so funny.
- Andy King!
- Loyal guy.
- Andy King you are the king.
Remember who's king.
- Burger King and Andy King.
- Nope, just them.
After ditching Connie West,
who sunk a bunch of her own money into Alienstock,
Matty Roberts partnered with America's
favorite canned urine manufacturer, Bud Light,
to throw an area 51 themed party
at the downtown Las Vegas Event Center.
Yeah, he like left the small business owner in the dust.
- You are a soulless person.
- Matty Roberts, be like Andy King.
Oh no, oh my God.
Look at this dude. - Is this him?
Is this Matty Roberts? - Is this Matty Roberts?
Oh! - Oh my God, okay.
- Yeah, this makes sense now.
- So what started as a joke spawned three more
real life events and Jay Oliver Conroy,
a journalist for The Guardian, went to all of them.
The gist of his account was that the Bud Light party
was basically a rave with a special edition Bud Light can.
Dude, it straight up looks like Hard Fest.
- Yeah, this is an excuse to just go party.
It's not about the aliens anymore.
The government's trying to get everyone drunk
so they can forget that there are secrets.
- But they're not even trying
because we're very willing to get drunk.
The Little Aleinn concert actually worked out kind of well,
considering that there was barely any entertainment.
- They were probably so stressed out.
- Yeah, they were like, God, we're gonna have
a bunch of drunk (bleep) and fishnets.
But no, it's just a couple of guys with backpacks.
- This is like desert Fyre Fest.
- Yeah.
- Except no food or water.
- And no (bleep) jobs, probably.
The alien research center event had so few people
the first day that the music talent
didn't even attend the second day,
and the tickets were changed from $51 to free.
What if frickin Billie Eilish was just like literally there?
What if she was there to perform
and no one came and she was like all right.
- She's like better luck next year.
- This is what they were talking about
when they said clapping cheeks, I guess.
- Well I guess that's the only blowing that happened, huh?
- All of these events were happening off site.
The actual storm ended up being around 40 vloggers,
influencers, meme aficionados,
and journalists standing in the dirt,
near a fence in the middle of (bleep) nowhere.
Pepe's a frog, not an alien, you frickin speciesist.
- Not all green things are alien, okay?
- Stop stereotyping.
So the group gathered outside the gates
before being quickly dispersed by law enforcement,
and the only arrest being for public urination.
- Three, two, one!
Go!
- They didn't even run with him.
- This is so cringy.
At the end of the day, the government won.
- The most surprising part of all this
is that 40 people were still interested
in a three month old meme.
So, did these events kill the meme or is it still funny?
Let us know in the comments.
Thanks for watching.
I'm done hosting now.
You wanna look at more memes?
- Sure.
- Okay.
- Oh my God, I love this ET.
- Where do people buy these alien full sized bodies?
- I think you can.
They're pretty expensive.
- Coming out of Area 51 knowing
how to pronounce Worcestershire.
- Me running away with the secret reason
why America isn't using the metric system.
- What's wrong with us?
Why aren't we using the metric system?
Me running away from Area 51 knowing
who put the alphabet in alphabetical order.
- Maybe there's like a whole stack of files,
like the Bernstein Bears theory.
- Oh my gosh.
Yeah.
Oh, those freak me out.
That's creepy.
Oh yeah.
- Expectations, reality, that's honestly what it is.
- That is it.
Would you have gone if you had like a free ride?
- No.
- All right.
Thank you so much for watching this video.
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Area 51 is real! - Here we go!
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