Kylie Rancor
The COVID-19 conspiracy theories that have been running rampant across the internet — and particularly across Facebook — for the past 11 months range from things that are almost believable if you squint long enough to ideas that are truly so insane that it’s hard to believe anyone actually falls for them.
And now a new contender has popped up that falls squarely in the latter category.
Programmer Mario Fusco shared an image to Twitter shortly before the new year claiming that conspiracy theorists in Italy are circulating an image they believe is the design for a 5G chip meant to be implanted in unsuspecting fools alongside the COVID-19 vaccine.
“In reality,” he wrote of the picture in question, “it is the electric circuit of a guitar pedal.”
He also joked that he believes “putting it in the covid vaccine has been an excellent idea.”
According to Mashable, the link up at the top of the image “points to an anonymous self-publishing platform, Telegraph,” and it’s unclear whether the image has circulated elsewhere as part of this 5G chip conspiracy theory.
However, the belief that the COVID vaccine is merely a ploy to insert some sort of tracking device into people is one that’s held by far too many folks eager to jump on the paranoia bandwagon, so something like this being passed around the internet as “proof” is hardly a reach.
Twitter users responding to Fusco’s tweet were a little sharper, thankfully, and knocked down the whole 5G chip theory entirely without breaking a sweat.
Others didn’t even bother with logic, jumping right ahead to jokes about have a guitar pedal inserted into your body as the photo suggests.
At least the COVID-hoaxers provide us some excellent amusement on social media, even if the downside is they’re enabling the continuation of a life-altering pandemic that has kept people in their homes for nearly a year out of fear for their lives. It’s quite literally the absolute least they can do at this point.