The Area 51 saga is the gift that keeps on giving as more developments keep rolling in from 2019’s strangest meme. Two Dutch YouTubers tried to rush the gate for themselves and were met with a quick L in Nevada. Yahoo reported that 20-year-old Ties Grazier and 21-year-old Govert Charles Wilhelmus Jacob Sweep pleaded guilty to trespassing. Both are expected to be released from jail and return to the Netherlands this week.
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Beatty Justice Court hosted the two internet personalities as they plead guilty to the charges along with illegal parking on Monday. Both Sweep and Grazier were sentenced to one year in county jail. As a part of their plea agreement, they must now stay away from events involving or near the Nevada National Security Site. That means they will have to enjoy the Area 51 music festival from at least 500 feet away.
To make matters more strange, they were at a government area 18 miles southeast of Area 51. That is quite the distance to be Naruto Running in the hopes of seeing some aliens. All of this comes after the “official” raid was cancelled last week. That hasn’t stopped the viral joke from occupying a place in the popular consciousness long after the plans went up in smoke. Even now, after the smoke has cleared, the joke has managed to linger all the way into the fall, which is some serious staying power for any Internet joke.
“Alienstock” was initially a playful raid to shed some light on what exactly was going on inside the Area 51 compound. Before long, millions of Facebook users signed up and the event grew into some weird amalgamation of a convention, music festival, espionage influencer happening. Friday, September 20th was supposed to be the big day, but now something else will have to capture the imagination of the entire Internet at once.
Matty Roberts was the mastermind behind the entire stunt. He quickly decided to let the air out of this balloon before it popped in his face. Roberts recently had an interview with the Las Vegas Review Journal about how strange “Alienstock” had become, “It’s a fantastic relief. I’ve had a lot of concerns leading up to Alienstock. Just to see all those come to a head 11 days before the event is kind of a relief.”
The young architect of this event had the idea to launch the Facebook event that would launch a thousand memes a few months ago. He couldn’t imagine that this silly joke would become a phenomenon, “I just thought it would be a funny idea for the meme page,” Roberts explained to NPR earlier this summer. “And it just took off like wildfire. It’s entirely satirical though, and most people seem to understand that.”
