Conspiracy theory is dead, and it died sometime around November 2021.

I discovered this using the most advanced scientific method available, which is to wander around New York City, looking at the weird spiteful scribblings people have left on the street. When I visited in November 2021, the scribblings were everywhere. On a parking meter: “YOU ARE THE CARBON THEY WANT TO REDUCE.” Taped to the window of a steak house: “YOU CHOSE FEAR OVER FREEDOM.” Spray-painted in huge letters on the East River Esplanade: “COVID IS NOT REAL. WAKE UP!” On the sidewalk on Fifth Avenue: “NWO IS KILLING YOU SLOWLY EVERY DAY.” On a sign for a vaccination center: “DEPOPULATION!!! SAVE YOURSELF!” On a lamppost: “THEY WILL KEEP DOING THIS AS LONG AS YOU DON’T STAND UP.” On the wall of a Chinese restaurant: “STOP THE GROOMING STOP THE SLAUGHTER STOP THE LIES — WE ARE NOT ANIMALS.” On some scaffolding: “SIX BILLION DEAD — RUN + HIDE — SIX BILLION DEAD.”

Hundreds of these urgent, panicked messages, all in different handwriting: some small but significant fragment of New York’s population was going out at night to reproduce the buzzing inside their brains all over the physical landscape of the city. This was around the same time that people kept talking about how “the vibes are off in New York.” The place felt tense and itchy. A slow, dangerous desperation in the air. And on every street and around every corner, the buildings themselves were announcing that something terrible was happening. Not the final, cathartic end of the world, but a catastrophe that was almost indistinguishable from ordinary life.