Crop Circles: Mowing Down Common Sense
There’s something especially magical about crop circles. Not in the way the believers think — no sacred geometry, no alien landing pads — but magical in the sense that a couple of dudes with planks and rope can absolutely devastate the critical thinking skills of an entire generation.
Every summer, like clockwork, a field somewhere wakes up with a new “unexplained phenomenon” flattened into its wheat. The news stations race over, sticking microphones in the faces of farmers who swear they heard humming noises, or saw mysterious lights. The “experts” show up next — armed with tape measures and the absolute certainty that, yes, this pattern of flattened barley is definitely the work of extraterrestrials and not, say, two guys named Carl and Dave after six beers and a bad idea.
It’s not even a mystery. Doug Bower and Dave Chorley literally admitted to starting the whole thing in the 1970s. They showed reporters how they did it, live. They gave demonstrations. They basically handed the world a step-by-step DIY guide for flattening a field with nothing but a couple planks and some rope. Didn’t matter. People still clutched their crystals and insisted that no, no, this one — this perfect spiral stamped into Farmer Joe’s cornfield — was definitely a message from the Andromeda Council.
Of course, the believers have their fallback excuses. “The fakes are fake! But some are real!” Sure, Carol. The real ones are always the blurry ones, the undocumented ones, the ones that conveniently disappear when you apply even basic scrutiny. Funny how that works.
Crop circles are the perfect scam: impressive-looking but easily explained, simple enough to debunk in five minutes, yet bafflingly persistent because apparently people would rather believe in space graffiti than admit they got punked by two retired pranksters with a plank of wood and too much free time.
If aliens really are crossing the galaxy just to squish plants into swirls, then maybe it’s better we don’t make contact. Clearly, they’re not sending their best.