Ted Cruz–Zodiac Killer meme
The Ted Cruz–Zodiac Killer meme is an internet meme which circulated in 2015. A facetious conspiracy theory, the meme suggests that Ted Cruz, a United States Senator and 2016 US presidential candidate, is the Zodiac Killer, an unidentified serial killer active in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Cruz, born in 1970, could not have committed these murders, which began before his birth. Circulators of the meme do not genuinely believe that he was the Zodiac Killer, citing the absurdity of its premise; NPR wrote that the meme captured "a feeling they have about  Cruz: they think he's creepy. And they want to point that out, as clearly as they can." Origin and spread. A January 2016 investigation by Miles Klee of "The Daily Dot" found the first use of the meme to be by a Twitter user in March 2013, as Cruz was speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference and vowing to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The actual Tweet was, "Alert: Ted Cruz is speaking!! His speech is titled: 'This Is The Zodiac Speaking'" The meme was not repeated until November 2014, by another Twitter user writing about Cruz's  proposal against net neutrality. It continued in obscurity up to February 2016, when another Twitter user edited a picture of a Republican debate in order to include "Is Ted Cruz the Zodiac Killer?" in the interactive ticker at the bottom. That month, "is ted cruz the zodiac killer" was the second highest suggestion in Google's autocomplete for "is ted", but by April it was not in the autocomplete at all. News.com.au writer Matthew Dunn suggested that Google was censoring the search term, showing evidence that it accounted for 89% of total searches when compared to other terms in the  autocomplete. In April 2016, the "Houston Chronicle" said the meme "has a following. A Facebook group named for the meme has more than 27,000 members. A Google search turns up 621,000 hits, including exploratory articles by some of the biggest news publications on the web". Cruz himself has jocularly alluded to the meme by tweeting one of the Zodiac Killer's cryptograms; first in October 2017 responding to a retweet from Senator Ben Sasse referring to Cruz as "the son of the guy who killed Kennedy" (a reference to a conspiracy theory involving Rafael Cruz) and then wishing a "Happy  Halloween" in 2018. In December 2020, after the 340-character Zodiac cipher was cracked, Cruz retweeted an article about the cipher with the caption "uh oh". In popular culture. After the edited image showing the question on Google trended, the meme spread into popular culture. Books about Cruz being the Zodiac Killer, including romantic ones, were listed on Amazon.com. In February 2016, Public Policy Polling asked registered voters in Florida ahead of the Republican primary if they believed Cruz to be the Zodiac Killer; 10% believed and 28% were not sure. The other 62% did not think he was. Comedian  Larry Wilmore made references to the meme in his April 2016 routine at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, including a joke that Cruz was not campaigning to win the nomination, but to continue a murder spree. The meme has been repeated, without disclaimer, in anti-Cruz opinion pieces in "GQ" and the "Chicago Tribune". Reception. Lindsey Martin, a Twitter user who helped circulate the meme, told NPR that she did so because it is "so obviously untrue... if there was any way that it could possibly be true I would be scared to joke about it just because of the  repercussions.” "The Verge" writer Kaitlyn Tiffany opined that some may consider the subject of the meme to be "distasteful and irresponsible, even dangerous". Leigh Alexander considered its spread an example of the growing political engagement of youth, writing that in such memes, "the political figure is exaggerated, his context made grotesque or fantastical, just as in traditional political cartooning." According to Lozano, the point of the meme is to "[demonize] his character". Heidi Cruz responded to the meme by stating that she has "been married to him for 15 years, and I know pretty well who he is, so it  doesn't bother me at all. There's a lot of garbage out there". Ted Cruz acknowledged the meme on his official Twitter account on October 18, 2017, by tweeting an image of one of the Zodiac Killer's encrypted messages. He did so again on October 31 of the following year.