It’s always been there. You just need to know where to look before it’s too late.

YOU ARE YOU.

Above the “you are you” sticker sits another, very different one.

III is for 3, the three percent. 1776, the year America declared its independence. Simple enough, but once down the rabbit hole, it means much more.

YOU ARE YOU.

What are you?What forms the basis for your personality, beliefs, actions, your way of life? A group? A creed? Your social media feed?

Three Percenters are a well-known far-right group who are anti-government extremists. They’re called Three Percenters because they believe only 3 percent of the colonial population rose up to fight the British. The Anti Defamation League says that this claim is inaccurate.

Three Percenters are looking for a violent revolution.

And in the photo, of course, the Infowars dot com tag is essential. If you are curious, you can purchase many Three Percenter stickers on lesser-known sites like Amazon! This surely isn’t a problem. This picture was taken in Cambridge, near the MIT/Kenmore T stop.

Thicket creeper at the Harvard Arboretum (all of my nature photos were taken there). There’s also some common hop mixed in. I went there to see if I could find some kudzu, an invasive vine, which, in one of my books, was talked about heavily.

Conspiracies are very invasive as well, creeping up the walls of the internet, sucking out all of the conversation to sustain themselves. Not all vines are kudzu, but it’s important to know which ones are.

If tended to and given the correct support, the vines will eventually flower. Ones left to run rampant will take as much space as they can survive in.

The vines which are already invasive will not be stopped by others so easily. Slowed, maybe, but stopped? No.

Creeping forward, it continues.

Creeping forward. Conspiracies seep into our lives. Or have they always been here?

You can’t see it from here, can you?

To me, even this is too big. Big enough to almost blot out the name of the candidate.

And here it is up close.

I saw this in Chinatown while walking to the T after getting my COVID test. My brain didn’t originally register it as real. I wanted to laugh and I wanted to throw up.

Do I want to understand it? Do I want to know the person who put this up? It’d only make me feel worse. I know I already felt sick enough taking the photo.

As some plants die, others thrive.

The cycle’s natural, as all things that live must eventually cease doing so. However, do the flower know the ones around them are dying? Some will release chemicals to signal to others when predators/parasites are near. But I guess the only way a lot of flowers know they’re really dying is when it’s too late, and they fall back to the earth, hoping the soil will allow them to grow again.

They trust in the cycle.

Can we trust our cycle of information? Can you trust yours?

Will the flowers ever bloom in the same way?

Etruscan Honeysuckle, native to the Mediterranian. The Etruscans heavily influenced Roman ways of life. Now, Rome influences the United States. One person in particular who has a fascination with Roman history is Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg. He views Augustus Ceasar with great reverence.

Augustus is not a particularly popular figure. Roman historian Tacitus said, of Augustus’ “200 years of peace” that the Romans make a desert and call it peace.

Is Mark Zuckerberg trying to emulate this emperor? Peace for him, but for the world— chaos.

In a desert, almost nothing grows.

This one’s more like a Where’s Waldo. I’ll let you see if you can find it.

The next sentence will give it away.

Below the handlebars, intertwined in the brake wires as if snaking through them, there’s an Infowars sticker. The funniest thing is, I didn’t realize it was there when I took this picture, since I just thought the bike looked nice. This picture was taken near The Common.

The soil conspiracy theories are grown in is rotten— has been since the beginning. Things grown from the seed of conspiracy theories will only ever delude people.

If you’re looking for them, you can see the threads of conspiracy in real life.

Look before it’s too late, and realize the vines are kudzu.