The attempted assassination of US President Donald Trump on the weekend was staged.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt practically predicted it in an interview with Fox News before the dinner.
Not to mention, all the guests looked way too calm — did you see that man who continued eating his meal while shots rang out?
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Well, that’s what a lot of people on the internet are saying.
It wasn’t long after Cole Tomas Allen allegedly stormed the lobby outside the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, armed with guns and knives, for the internet to be flooded with a myriad of conspiracy theories.
The 31-year-old managed to bypass security but didn’t make it into the ballroom where the president, his wife, Vice President JD Vance and a host of high-profile journalists were eating.
Allen exchanged gunfire with law enforcement and was tackled to the ground, while the attendees of the dinner were told to duck under tables before being evacuated.
Conspiracy theories have been around forever but how have they changed in the wake of social media?
Experts say our unfettered access to all corners of the internet puts these often bizarre theories right in front of our faces.
You don’t have to look hard to find them, and once you do, descending down a rabbit hole couldn’t be easier.
The theories
The main theory people have jumped on is that the entire thing was fake.
The event was staged to build sympathy for the president, to paint him in a better light amid ongoing criticism due to the war in the Middle East.
The reasons that people point to the shooting being fake?
People point out a strange comment made by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt in an interview with Fox News before the dinner.
“It’ll be funny, it’ll be entertaining. There will be some shots fired tonight in the room. So everyone should tune into it, it’s gonna be really great, I’m looking forward to hearing it,” she said.
Then people noted some of the guests of the dinner appeared very calm despite being yelled at by Secret Service agents to duck and hide under tables.
One man, later identified as talent agent Michael Glantz, was caught on camera calmly continuing to eat his dinner, seemingly unperturbed by the threat of a shooter.
Later Glantz told the New York Times he was a “hygiene freak” with a bad back.
“There was no freaking way I was getting in my new tux on the dirty Hilton floor. It was not happening,” he said.
The reaction of UFC president Dana White was also jumped on.
“I didn’t get down. It was f**king awesome. I literally took every minute of it in and it was a pretty crazy, unique experience,” he said after being evacuated.
Another sticking point for those who believe the incident was staged was the ease at which Allen managed to get past a security checkpoint while armed with weapons.
CCTV from the White House showed the alleged gunman running at speed past Secret Service agents — all of whom appeared to be relaxed as the event was taking place on the floor below.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche hailed the response as “a massive security success story”, telling CNN after the incident that he was “overly confident that the Secret Service did their job here, not only in the work last night, but in the days coming up to the event”.
A display of lax security would also be a good way to drum up support for Trump’s new White House ballroom, some said.
Construction has begun on the $400 million privately funded ballroom. The flagship room will replace the East Wing, which was demolished last year.
In a press conference by Trump around 30 minutes after the shooting, the US president said the attempt showed why a new, more secure space to hold events was needed.
“I didn’t want to say this, but this is why we have to have all of the attributes of what we’re planning at the White House. It’s actually a larger room, and it’s much more secure. It’s drone-proof, it’s bulletproof glass. We need the ballroom,” he said.
Earlier this month, a judge ordered a halt on construction of the ballroom citing the lack of congressional authorisation.
Shortly after Allen was identified as the alleged shooter, internet sleuths began to build a picture of the man.
Soon after pictures circulated of Allen wearing a sweatshirt bearing an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) logo, driving theories was a Zionist.
This photo has not been verified as real.
How conspiracy theories have changed with social media
By definition, a conspiracy theory is something that provides an explanation for an event, whether that be a big political event or even something in the sporting world, Flinders University lecturer in Psychology and post-doctoral researcher Neophytos Georgiou told 7NEWS.com.au.
Georgiou, whose research focusesv on conspiracy theory beliefs, particularity in the era of social media, said conspiracy theories do two things — they give the person a quick answer and soothes any anxiety they may have.
“When we don’t know what’s going on, the quickest way to soothe and to understand the way forward is to probably jump to some of these theories, because it gives us that explanation,” he said.
“When a really big event happens to us, we feel the urge to find a really big answer. So you know, when COVID happened, COVID is a pandemic. It’s an illness.
“It spread and then we locked down. We had vaccines, we’re better, but because of the grandiose (nature) of the event, people felt there was equally as big of a grandiose, hidden reason for why it’s happened.”
An attempted assassination of a president, like what happened on the weekend, is the perfect example of a grandiose event.
“People are stretching far and wide for why this has occurred. What was the manifesto of the individual?,” Georgiou said.
“Is this purposely done to hide X, Y and Z?”
Conspiracies have been around for a long time — the moon landing, John F Kennedy Jr’s assassination, QAnon, Tupac’s death or flat Earth to name a few.
Humans haven’t changed our tendency to turn to conspiracy theories, they’re now just more accessible than ever.
“The fact that we do have the internet now, not only do we have the internet, we have spaces of the internet where you … can burrow yourself within a particular environment, a particular group, and you can only see certain information,” Georgiou said.
“Even just down to how algorithms work, where we’re retraining our phones to show us things that are similar to other things we like.”
But what kind of damage can these conspiracy theories have?
While some of us can simply watch a video or read a post on X, have a laugh and move on, others may cross the line and become overly cynical.
It’s good to be skeptical and cautious online, Associate Professor and Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow at RMIT’s School of Media and Communication Dr T.J Thomson said — but being distrustful of everything is not.
“When they go past being skeptical and cautious into being cynical and saying, ‘I can’t trust anything at all. I don’t know who to trust, what to trust, everything’s a lie’, that’s a really dangerous kind of place for society and for democracy to be in,” he told 7NEWS.
“But misinformation, conspiracy theories, more broadly can have all sorts of tangible integral effects.”
The easiest and most important thing you can do as a user of the internet is to pay attention to the sources you’re getting your information from, Thomson said.
Applying a bit of critical thinking goes a long way.
“Are they familiar sources? Are they unfamiliar sources? Do they have credibility based on past interactions?,” Thomson said.
“Have you encountered them spreading falsehoods before? Have they been reliable before? Kind of just putting that into conversations, is really a good thing to keep in mind I would say.”