The internet can be a wild place at the best of times, and online discourse has only become more polarised, wired and weird during the current global pandemic, as every conspiracy theorist with a broadband connection feels obliged to share their MSM-obliterating ‘research’ with the world.
In recent weeks, joy over the discovery, regulatory approval and imminent distribution of an effective coronavirus vaccine has - entirely predictably - been accompanied by wild, nonsensical claims from tinfoil hat-wearing sections of the populace, who maintain that this whole year of global chaos, tragedy, trauma and fear is an orchestrated plot to control the masses by a shadowy global elite.
Quite how government figures incapable of finding their own arse with both hands have the capacity to pull off this audacious coup is never fully explained, but let’s not get mired in awkward details, shall we?
The idea that governments worldwide are seeking to track and manipulate their own citizens with digital chips has been circulating for decades now, but the most recent twist on the theory posits that the roll-out of a coronavirus vaccine is merely a front for injecting the populace with a 5G tracking chip, which may or may not be a fiendish plot by Bill Gates to exert control over the planet. To this end, ‘truthers’ were recently cock-a-hoop when they felt that they had uncovered top secret documents featuring a schematic ‘proving’ the existence of 5G chips in the newly approved vaccines. There is, however, one tiny little flaw in their argument, namely that the much-circulated diagram actually lays bare the electronic circuitry of a Boss Metal Zone guitar pedal. And when Mario Fusco, a senior software engineer at Redhat, spotted the misinformation, he took to Twitter to flag it.
“Here in Italy people started to share this figure claiming that this is the diagram of the 5G chip that has been inserted in the COVID vaccine,” he tweeted. “In reality it is the electric circuit of a guitar pedal.”
Here in Italy people started to share this figure claiming that this is the diagram of the 5G chip that has been inserted in the covid vaccine.In reality it is the electric circuit of a guitar pedal and I believe that putting it in the covid vaccine has been an excellent idea💡 pic.twitter.com/qXKnv7VVlyDecember 28, 2020
The evolution of language has seen the phrase “inject it into my veins” used as a 2020 term denoting wild enthusiasm, but, as yet, there’s no serious scientific evidence to suggest that any global elite is seeking to implant humanity with technology allowing us to accurately mimic the tone of a heavily distorted electric guitar. Which, in some ways, is a crying shame.
