If you’ve been on social media sometime within these past few days, you might’ve seen memes about raiding Area 51 – like this one:

Maybe you’ve seen memes from people hooked on the idea of keeping an alien of their own, as a housemate, or a pet:

Of course, there’s an explanation for all this. For those unacquainted with the term (or area), though, Area 51 is a top-secret scientific research facility owned by the US government, supposedly devoted to the study (and some say, captivity) of aliens. That leads to the question – why are people making memes out of visiting it?

All these jokes started with a Facebook event, aptly titled “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us”. The event is expected to take place at 3a.m. on September 20, in Nevada, and has the following description:

“We will all meet up at the Area 51 Alien Center tourist attraction and coordinate our entry. If we Naruto run, we can move faster than their bullets. Lets see them aliens.”

The “Naruto run” is a unique way of running, employed by all the characters in the popular manga series, Naruto.

Like so.

Since the jokes started, the event has had more than 1 million people indicating that they would be attending, and more than 900,000 others saying that they were interested in attending. Interest in the event has gotten so massive that it’s even caught the attention of the US Air Force! In light of the event, they’ve had to release a statement to discourage people from trying to enter the area.

Unfortunately, as you might expect, the Area 51 visit is a joke. Still, it’s an interesting thought to entertain. If a joke event manages to catch the attention of the US Air Force, there must be something(s) in there that we’re not supposed to be seeing. Guess we’ll just have to keep wondering about what lies in Area 51 – unless, of course, over a million people do show up in Nevada on 20th September.

A sleepless cryptid with a sweet tooth, who spends most of her free time on the internet. Sheryl loves binge-watching shows on Netflix, Persona 5's Joker, arcades, and all her emotional support K-Pop boys.