Can 'The X
Alex Jones
But there could be another significant factor at work. During the heyday of The X-Files  alien conspiracy mania was mainstream. Independence Day used the Roswell incident of 1947 as a key plot point  and Men in Black suggested constant alien cover-ups  while a supposed alien autopsy aired in prime time. It was hip and cool to know the various plots associated with "the grays " and when the Lindsay Lohan vehicle I Know Who Killed Me cast radio show host Art Bell (of the conspiracy-themed Coast to Coast show) as himself  it played like an attempt at an in-joke for cool kids. These days  however  the most prominent talker about aliens and secret plots is no longer Bell  who kept things relatively apolitical on-air and is a centrist Libertarian. It's now  Alex Jones   a Trump supporter and peddler of doomsday supply wares.  Jones   whose conspiracy-mongering actually prompted NASA to deny  they  were hiding child slaves on Mars  is also known for more politically targeted rants  like the government turning children gay  Barack Obama being the head of ISIS  and the Sandy Hook massacre being faked to help facilitate a government gun grab.
 Jones  and  his  contributors also have issues with "anti-white racism " all while a separate school of thought has emerged that tales of ancient aliens are racist  as they assume ancient civilizations of color like the Egyptians could only have come up with the pyramids and such by getting outside help from a more advanced race. Throw into that mix the "birther" theories that were all the rage during the Obama presidency -- promoted by our current president -- that the chief executive was some kind of secret Kenyan Muslim usurper  and you start to get a picture of what conspiracy theorists look like in today's media. Being into aliens and cover-ups is less associated now with young and sexy TV stars  and more the domain of aggrieved middle-aged men.
X-Files creator Chris Carter is clearly having none of that  though given the overall storylines of the show  he seems at the very least to be inspired by a favorite left-wing conspiracy notion of contaminated vaccines. A montage of the achievements of archvillain Carl "Cigarette-Smoking Man" Busch includes a whole lot of Donald Trump and Steve Bannon (masterful timing  it turned out  as the spat between those two was making headlines almost simultaneously)  as well as a line about how people are easier to fool now because they don't believe in science (cough... GlobalWarming... cough cough) and don't know what fake news is. Meanwhile  our heroes remain FBI agents  who  in the minds of  Alex Jones  devotees  would be considered part of the anti-Trump "Deep State."  Jones  was arguably an inspiration for Joel McHale's YouTube host character in season 10  and written semi-sympathetically...but that was January of 2016  when nobody assumed the election would go the way it did  or that  Jones  would get a big thumbs-up from candidate Trump.
In an episode that also definitively stated the moon landing was faked and that Busch is definitely the father of two very significant characters  we also caught hints of two different conspiracies at war with one another. Their most obvious point of disagreement on the show is whether Dana Scully should live or die -- but in real life they may be representative of the Art Bell and  Alex Jones  wings of Conspiracystan. We get a strong sense of what side Carter is on...but the low ratings suggest that those who pore over cover-ups and aliens nowadays may no longer feel politically simpatico with the creator.
Or  perhaps  they can just go to any corner of the Internet and find similarly intricate stories  many of which are shared as memes on Facebook by that uncle who turns out to have been a lot crazier than you ever suspected. Even as  Jones  semi-admitted in court that he's playing a character akin to  of all things  Jack Nicholson's Joker  I've seen family members share his stories about a coming race war with utter seriousness. Though when he talks about lizard people  of course he's "joking."
But there could be another significant factor at work. During the heyday of The X-Files  alien conspiracy mania was mainstream. Independence Day used the Roswell incident of 1947 as a key plot point  and Men in Black suggested constant alien cover-ups  while a supposed alien autopsy aired in prime time. It was hip and cool to know the various plots associated with "the grays " and when the Lindsay Lohan vehicle I Know Who Killed Me cast radio show host Art Bell (of the conspiracy-themed Coast to Coast show) as himself  it played like an attempt at an in-joke for cool kids. These days  however  the most prominent talker about aliens and secret plots is no longer Bell  who kept things relatively apolitical on-air and is a centrist Libertarian. It's now   [TGT]    a Trump supporter and peddler of doomsday supply wares.   [TGT] whose conspiracy-mongering actually prompted NASA to deny  they  were hiding child slaves on Mars  is also known for more politically targeted rants  like the government turning children gay  Barack Obama being the head of ISIS  and the Sandy Hook massacre being faked to help facilitate a government gun grab.
  [TGT] and   [TGT]   contributors also have issues with "anti-white racism " all while a separate school of thought has emerged that tales of ancient aliens are racist  as they assume ancient civilizations of color like the Egyptians could only have come up with the pyramids and such by getting outside help from a more advanced race. Throw into that mix the "birther" theories that were all the rage during the Obama presidency -- promoted by our current president -- that the chief executive was some kind of secret Kenyan Muslim usurper  and you start to get a picture of what conspiracy theorists look like in today's media. Being into aliens and cover-ups is less associated now with young and sexy TV stars  and more the domain of aggrieved middle-aged men.
X-Files creator Chris Carter is clearly having none of that  though given the overall storylines of the show  he seems at the very least to be inspired by a favorite left-wing conspiracy notion of contaminated vaccines. A montage of the achievements of archvillain Carl "Cigarette-Smoking Man" Busch includes a whole lot of Donald Trump and Steve Bannon (masterful timing  it turned out  as the spat between those two was making headlines almost simultaneously)  as well as a line about how people are easier to fool now because they don't believe in science (cough... GlobalWarming... cough cough) and don't know what fake news is. Meanwhile  our heroes remain FBI agents  who  in the minds of  Alex Jones  devotees  would be considered part of the anti-Trump "Deep State."  Jones  was arguably an inspiration for Joel McHale's YouTube host character in season 10  and written semi-sympathetically...but that was January of 2016  when nobody assumed the election would go the way it did  or that  Jones  would get a big thumbs-up from candidate Trump.
In an episode that also definitively stated the moon landing was faked and that Busch is definitely the father of two very significant characters  we also caught hints of two different conspiracies at war with one another. Their most obvious point of disagreement on the show is whether Dana Scully should live or die -- but in real life they may be representative of the Art Bell and  Alex Jones  wings of Conspiracystan. We get a strong sense of what side Carter is on...but the low ratings suggest that those who pore over cover-ups and aliens nowadays may no longer feel politically simpatico with the creator.
Or  perhaps  they can just go to any corner of the Internet and find similarly intricate stories  many of which are shared as memes on Facebook by that uncle who turns out to have been a lot crazier than you ever suspected. Even as  Jones  semi-admitted in court that he's playing a character akin to  of all things  Jack Nicholson's Joker  I've seen family members share his stories about a coming race war with utter seriousness. Though when he talks about lizard people  of course he's "joking."