Y2K Files: Conspiracy and Friendship at the Dawn of the Millennium

June 5, 2026

By Jay A. Trucker

As a young adult in the era immediately prior to social media, I had one conspiracy theorist friend. Rob was a warm, friendly guy--your typical hippie stoner. Like many 20 year olds, he was full of contradiction—a health advocate who chained smoked Parliaments, a vegan who delivered fried chicken, and a news junkie who obsessed with conspiracy zines and the work of David Icke, a role model for and compatriot of a young Alex Jones. I didn’t have to subscribe to his theories to be friends with Rob back then. I chuckled every time Rob told me a politician was a reptile, but my approval wasn’t required of our friendship. He had like-minded friends on AOL chat fora. Rob lived in two worlds, the real world and his internet conspiracy world.

During the Summer of 2020, Rob reached out to me. I hadn’t spoken to him in a decade. Among all of the check-ins I gave or received that year—a mix of desperate pleas for connection or attempts to rekindle bonds eroded before Covid-19 forced a break--Rob was the only person who seemed happy, blissful even. He was still living in his mother’s basement, still smoking street weed out of a crusty bowl, and still convinced our government was run by reptile people. But he didn’t have to look hard to find likeminded people anymore. He didn’t have to separate his real-life friendships from his online friends. He was right all along, he told me, and now the world agreed.

As an instructor of College Composition, Rob’s triumph was hard to process. He was right, in a sense. Today, we read, watch, and absorb the world around us through the lens of the internet. And even those of us with values and learning styles set in the pre-internet world must contend with the fact that our students’ world is Rob’s internet world. And it’s faster, more dynamic, and exponentially larger than the AOL fora of Rob’s youth.

I recognize that the cultural world Rob and I grew up with is not one to mourn. Both he and I were left-leaning thinkers, who railed against the hegemonic monoculture of the 80s and 90s, one dominated by giant, faceless corporations like Viacom, McDonald’s, Kellog’s, Bockbuster Video, and Matell. When I come across wistful calls for restoring an old mall to its former glory or memories of trips to the video store, I laugh.

That said, the implications for my work felt like nothing to laugh about---

So what does that say of my classroom objectives? How do I address credibility, peer review, objectively, and a myriad of other issues we teach? If Rob won, how had my research values lost? How do I teach 1st-year research in a world in which Rob was no longer the outcast, but the norm?

Contact

Jay Trucker, Ph.D.

Email

Phone

jtrucker@ccbcmd.edu

Jay Trucker, Ph.D.

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