Well, the storming of Area 51 turned out to be a big cosmic nothing.
I expected as much, but I will admit I am still a little disappointed.
If you don’t know what I am talking about, months ago a 21-year-old dude on Facebook posted a joke event called “Storm Area 51.” He obviously forgot that people are pretty stupid, so his joke became a call to action for those who believe man buns are awesome and rappers with tattoos on their face are actual musicians.
Area 51 is the “secret” military test base in Nevada where, according to people who live in their parent’s basement and eat Hot Pockets exclusively, Uncle Sam is keeping E.T. in a headlock.
So, millions of people marked that they were going to this non-event event. Authorities, again realizing that people these days are not exactly what most of us would consider smart in any way, decided they had better be prepared just in case.
Well, about 100 hardcore extraterrestrial believers showed up at the gates of the base. I cannot confirm how many were escaped mental patients or how many had smoked a little green substance before making their pilgrimage, but it appears that no one actually tried to make it onto the base.
Good thing. Because while the aliens allegedly being held at Area 51 are most likely not real, the bullets in the guns of those guarding the facility most certainly are.
Like any good social media event, Storm Area 51 took on a life of its own over the last few months. Local authorities were actually concerned that people would overrun the area and hordes of young people would get shot trying to storm the base.
Let’s be honest. To actually plan such a maneuver was more than this bunch could ever hope to do. What they really wanted was a reason to borrow their parents’ car and drive from Pennsylvania to a place not too far from Las Vegas so they could go into the desert and get drunk with some bros they met on the Internet.
Does anyone really think these people could pull off something with military precision? I would guess they had a hard time pulling off a run to the local Burger King for a bunch of Whoppers.
Sure, in my dreams I saw a huge group of people running toward Area 51 like a wave of humanity. And just as they got to the gates, our alien overlords rose up, 60 feet tall, and shot lasers out of their bulging eyes which exploded the shrieking millennials.
“Ouch! Bro that, like, totally hurts!” Says a kid struggling to run in his Crocs while carrying a White Claw as an alien torches him from above.
Alas, that didn’t happen.
Instead, our hapless stormers are now back at home, looking for ways to avoid getting a job and arguing online about which Game of Thrones character they would be in real life.
This is the perfect story for the Internet age. The Internet is a place filled with hate, to be sure, and misinformation to an astonishing degree. But it is also a place a generation that has done very little in real life can talk about tons of stuff they want to do, like storm Area 51. They never actually accomplish anything, of course. That would mean, like, doing something.
