At least 175 wildfires have been burning in the Carolinas since this past weekend, with one fire near Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, burning about 1,600 acres and forcing residents to evacuate, according to CNN. Enormous wildfires are atypical for North and South Carolina, but dry and windy conditions, with gusts over 130 mph, explain why these fires are so difficult to fight. That’s not good enough for conspiracy theorists, of course.
X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, has been flooded in recent days with conspiracy theories insisting the fires were started by powerful tech figures like Mark Zuckerberg as part of some dastardly attempt to turn Myrtle Beach into a so-called smart city. And while that’s an absurd claim, it’s becoming an extremely common one as climate change creates the ideal conditions for intense fires in very odd places.
Right-wing influencer John Sabal, tweeting as The Patriot Voice, insisted that what was happening in Myrtle Beach was so unusual it must be something suspicious, even claiming that local news held clues about what was in store.
“WHEN is the last time you have EVER heard of Myrtle Beach having damn ‘wildfires’?!?!?!” Sabal tweeted. “They think we are STUPID. If you pay close enough attention, they ALWAYS tell you in advance what they are planning, like on this news broadcast.”
Sabal went on to insist the fires were started with directed energy weapons, another way of saying that these wildfires were probably started by some kind of space laser.
“The ‘wildfires’ are being set off INTENTIONALLY by DEWs (Directed Energy Weapons) so they can easily burn down the area, where Blackrock can then come in and buy it all up cheap and rebuild it into a 15 minute ‘smart city’ PRISON,” Sabal continued.
Sabal claimed this is “EXACTLY what happened” in other recent fires in Hawaii, Texas, and California, all places where conspiracy theorists have previously claimed space lasers were being used to create destruction. Then, Sabal pointed out this was happening “even” as Donald Trump was president and claimed that Zuckerberg might be behind it.
“It looks like this time, Mark Zuckerberg has his hands ALL over this one, VERY CONCERNING considering he was just at the Inauguration and now is looking at moving D.C. to be close to Trump,” Sabal claimed.
Zuckerberg has indeed been cozying up to Trump ever since the assassination attempt against the president last summer. The Meta CEO even donated money and showed up at Trump’s inauguration. But everything else about what Sabal is saying isn’t true. Sabal shared a video from TikTok about Meta’s plans to add new technology to Myrtle Beach.
The local news clip from June 2023 talks about how technology was helping add 3D simulations for tourism promotion and how gunfire detection tech might make the city safer. Reasonably, people can debate whether these are good uses of taxpayer resources, but it’s not exactly evidence of some grand conspiracy to burn Myrtle Beach to the ground.
Sabal was far from the only one spreading these conspiracy theories on social media. HustleBitch, a right-wing account you may recognize from previous debunkers, tweeted Sunday the same baseless conspiracy theories, making similar connections to fires in Lahaina and Maui, Hawaii.
HustleBitch also shared the same video from WMBF in South Carolina as some kind of gotcha moment, as though trying to introduce some extremely tame tech upgrades to any city is evidence of anything more nefarious.
Responses to HustleBitch’s tweets insist the fires are also being caused by weather modification, something that’s apparently easier to believe than pointing at climate change. And that seems to be the crux of the problem. Whenever something terrible is happening, people naturally look for ways to prevent it from happening again. That sometimes leads people to find causal connections that simply aren’t there.
There’s no evidence that any Big Tech figures are intentionally starting wildfires to buy up land and start their own cities from scratch. There is, however, lots of evidence that the wealthiest guy in the world is currently dismantling the federal government and setting the U.S. economy on a path of destruction to line his own pockets. But believing a guy like Elon Musk could be doing everything he promised doesn’t quite fit with their worldview. No, we need space lasers for some reason. Apparently, it’s more exciting that way.
Musk doesn’t need space lasers. But he’s going to do a lot more damage than any space laser has ever done if he’s allowed to continue.
