The creator of the recent Area 51 raid joke, Matty Robert said in an interview, “I sparked a movement when I was bored at 2 a.m.,” he stated. You might be asking yourself right now, what is the Area 51 raid about, and what is Area 51? Well, Area 51 is a highly classified US Air Force facility located in Nevada Test and Training Range. The Area 51 raid was a joke made by a community college student, Matty Robert, with hundreds of thousands of people joining in on the mission to breach into Area 51.

Just earlier this month of September, two dutch men were arrested for trespassing and illegally parking too close in the range of Area 51, estimated about 3 miles deep. Within the past few days, US military apologised for a tweet that used the threat of employing bombs against “millennials,” who were thought to try and attempt to storm Area 51.

Now, you also might be asking another question, “Why are people talking about storming Area 51?” To explain, after the creator of the supposed joke of storming Area 51, Matty Roberts posted it on Facebook, within days of its post, the idea got so much attention after people started to actually take an interest in it. Soon enough, it became a viral sensation, with some alien enthusiasts attending the, “Storm Area 51” event.

On September 20th, when the raid was going to take place, only 150 people participated in the raid along with 1,500 bystanders with no attempt in raiding the facility. There was a total of 3 arrests. The first which occurred associated with the raid happened 10 days earlier, who were the 2 Dutch men that trespassed too close to the facility. Along with an additional arrest who was the Naruto runner. Naruto is a well known animated show in the category known as anime. The type of running originates from the protagonist from the show where he runs with his arms up behind his back. Following this arrest, showing the popularity of this show, a tweet was posted, “@RyanNanez: Lol someone actually did the naruto run #Area51Storm.” 

Despite all of this, no one got hurt on the actual day of the raid. There were no direct attempts to, or intent to storm the facility. Pop culture, social media, and people had their focuses on this raid, creating funny memes about the aliens, the internet blowing up with the amount of people interested in this raid, and the mentioning of Naruto runners from the show, this creating a very memorable but humorous event.