Did anyone else remember that brief spate of time when people were freaking out over ice cream trucks in Virginia? Oh, I do. It was all over TikTok and the reason why was pretty wild. 

According to TikTokkers, those ice cream trucks were cruising around late at night and picking up people. They claimed that people were being nabbed by the trucks, never to be seen again. It always happened at night, too.

Soon, it seemed like everyone had a story about this terrifying, jingle-playing trucks. In fact, claims even suggested that it was causing a spike in missing persons cases in the DMV area. 

Virginia police were quick to slap down the rumor before someone got hurt. They pointed out that the missing persons cases were not skyrocketing as others claimed, and that ice cream trucks have not been linked to a single abduction. 

That didn’t stop people from calling the police when a truck came a little too late for their liking. It also didn’t stop people from claiming they saw someone trying to abduct then late at night. 

Photos and videos of ice cream trucks on a late night drive still pop up on feeds. I’m not sure why this is so shocking, since even ice cream truck drivers have to go home once in a while.

For a while, the ice cream truck fiasco was starting to sound like other urban legends — such as crawlers, fleshgaits, and other similar stuff. But, it petered out fairly fast due to law enforcement and news stations putting their feet down. 

The more I think about how the ice cream truck debacle started off, the more I think it may have been a test run. For the first time in history, Americans now trust social media more than they trust mainstream news. 

They are right to do so, at least with certain stations. I mean, FOX News has basically abdicated all their attempts at even trying to look “fair and balanced,” despite what their slogans may say. 

While it’s great to see people taking the mainstream media with a grain of salt, the problem is that we’re now in a world where people trust social media more than regular, verified news and common sense. 

That’s why the ice cream truck fiasco took off the way it did: we’re literally playing a game of “he said, she said” on the internet and taking it quite seriously. This can have real-life consequences for everyone involved.

The “Evil Clown” epidemic of 2020 was actually somewhat real. There were real calls to police of people seeing evil-looking clowns hanging out in random places, often appearing to threaten others. Police actually arrested several of them, though the reason they were clowning around remains unknown. 

In other words, with clowns, there was a legit concern there. Police were involved. And while it was a random, bizarre little patch of strangeness, it was legitimate enough to be worthy of news stories. 

The ice cream truck hoax, on the other hand, has no basis in reality whatsoever. The fact that locals have been taking it as fact is a sign that we now believe social media more than we do legitimate sources of news like the police. 

It also means the lines between fact and fiction have become heavily blurred. I’m actually shocked that the police and news intervention even managed to squash it. 

I mean, shit, look at other propaganda campaigns that weren’t able to be squashed:

People still believe all this stuff, with more people believing this shit every day. 

We already know and confirmed that Russia has been using troll farms as a way to spread disinformation on social media. It’s been their primary way of sowing chaos and dissention throughout the United States. 

It’s so effective, it’s even starting to alter other countries’ political discourse too. In recent years, there has been an uptick in “Maple MAGAs” and Q-Anoners from all over the world.

Q and other propaganda vehicles played a major part in recent elections, devastated peoples’ mental health, and also caused millions of friendships to fracture as a result of peoples’ radicalization. 

If I were to try to attack the US, I’d take the ice cream truck hoax as a sign that Americans no longer trust their own eyes. While it seemed like a simple urban legend, the ice cream truck hoax managed to make people on both sides of the political spectrum raise their collective hackles. 

People in the DMV area quite literally couldn’t believe their eyes or the eyes of their neighbors. They believed social media more than what locals actually saw. 

I often get the feeling that America waged a war on its own people long before the onslaught of fake news. Much of the war seems to be on America’s belief systems — psychologically, socially, and economically.

The disinformation was a long-term goal of several countries, including the United States. CIA Chief William Casey famously said, “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the U.S. public believes is false.”

We’re at a point where we don’t trust our neighbors, don’t trust science, and can’t trust mainstream media. But somehow, we trust a social media video of a spooky ice cream truck with foreboding music. That’s wild.

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It may seem innocuous right now, but what next? Will it be something more insidious? And will we ever recognize it to be a lie? I’m not so sure.