Advertising has experienced some major milestones – think the emergence of the printing press in the 1440s, or the huge impact of television.
Since its very first beginnings, which are thought to date back to steel carvings made by the ancient Egypt... moreAdvertising has experienced some major milestones – think the emergence of the printing press in the 1440s, or the huge impact of television.
Since its very first beginnings, which are thought to date back to steel carvings made by the ancient Egyptians, advertising has constantly had to adapt and change to suit new mediums and an increasingly savvy audience.
But there’s been one medium that’s had a bigger impact on advertising than anything before it.
The wonderful World Wide Web.
The internet has revolutionized advertising in the most astounding way. Not only has it changed the way ads are broadcast, but it’s changed the way consumers act towards them.
Then: Traditional Advertising
Let’s take things back to the pre-internet days. The days when advertising was carried out via cheesy infomercials on radio, fuzzy old televisions, and billboards. This was the golden era of advertising, when the whole movement was considered a huge part of society – almost taking on a cultural status.
The first TV ad popped up on screens in 1941 in America – probably a lot later than you’d imagine. Before the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Philadelphia Phillies played each other, viewers saw a brief commercial for Bulova clocks and watches.
Such a small moment set the precedent for the next seventy years.
Back then, adverts were a staunch part of society. Despite the 50s being a tense decade for America during the Cold War, TV viewers felt optimistic and were beginning to loosen their purse strings as prosperity began to rise.
Characters were built around products to create a semblance of connection between viewers and brands (though this idea of a consumer connection didn’t become a priority until later), and famous faces were brought it to sell everything from washing machines to cigarettes.
Take the Marlborough Man, for example, who became a recognizable cultural figure between the 1960s and 1990s. The aim was to turn filtered cigarettes from a feminine phenomenon to a more masculine one with the help of rugged cowboys and a stream of moody looking men. Even today it’s considered one of the best advertisement campaigns of all time.
On television, products and characters began to go hand and hand. Let’s take cereal as an example. Think Tony the Tiger and Frosted Flakes, or the Snap, Crackle, and Pop gnomes for Rice Krispies – both of which are still going strong today.
Despite the different characters and the vastly different selection of products that began to emerge, ads at this time had one purpose: to sell.
Yes, these characters were central to the ads and played a major part in creating an ad culture for consumers, but the product was always at the forefront.
It might have seemed like Tony the Tiger or the Marlboro Man were the epicenters of their aligning ad campaigns, but they simply served as a tool to sell, sell, sell.
Now: Different Motives
Today, the shift in the advertising world has seen the rise of other motives when it comes to commercials. Rather than the sell mentality, ads are focused on community building and brand awareness.
The product is no longer the centerpiece.
The solution to the consumer’s problem is, and hey, guess what, the product just so happens to provide that solution.
Let’s take an example that’s not too dissimilar to the character-led ads of the past. The Dairy Milk Gorilla ad in 2007 didn’t even show or mention Cadbury – the company it was supposed to be advertising.
Ad disaster? No, far from it.
The drum-playing gorilla (bashing along to Phil Collins In the Air Tonight and set against a purple background) got tongues wagging. It got people talking. This wasn’t a brazen attempt to flog more Cadbury chocolate bars. Instead, it was a strategic move to raise awareness of Cadbury and to solidify it as a “cool” and “must-have” brand (because why else would everyone be talking about it?).
The simple nature of the ad leant itself perfectly to spoofs, one key way viewers can interact with a brand – almost like a back and forth dialogue. To date, there are more than 300 spoofs of the ad.
Taking things online, Lowe’s “Fix in Six” home improvement ads filmed through the 6-second Vine app aren’t overt ads. The genius videos show solutions to DIY problems in six seconds or less – not only are they fun to watch, but they are also actionable (basically, a dream combination).
The humorous take on home DIY problems has helped it create a friendly persona for its consumers, taking it a step away from “advertiser”. “Fix in Six” isn’t overtly linked to Lowe’s either. There’s no “hey, this is Lowe’s and you need to buy everything in this ad from us” spiel.
This idea of emphasizing a solution to consumer’s problems (like home DIY) instead of on the product is becoming increasingly common. Brands have to work twice as hard to gain the trust of consumers in the internet world (which we’ll discuss more in a moment), so advertising has kind of taken on a two step process:
Helpful content that provides a solution to a problem.
Consumers likes helpful content and digs deeper to find out more about the brand (therefore building trust and a connection. Note that the consumer is actively digging to find out more themselves).
From a Passive to Active Consumer: The Biggest Changes
Our TV experiences are still littered with traditional ads, but the times are quickly a-changing. More change has happened in the past 20 years in advertising than in the previous 2,000 years, when ancient Egyptians would etch public notices into steel, right up until the 80s when ads were a form of culture of sorts.
What has so drastically changed the ad landscape?
We’re living in the ad-blocker age
Audiences are actively choosing not to have to sit through commercials or be bombarded with ads while they browse the internet.
We only have to look at the rise of apps that stop ads from showing up, and the emergence of pay-to-stream platforms like Netflix. Yep, people are actively choosing to pay to not have to sit through ads.
This new trend of saying no to ads is thought to have cost publishers up to $22 billion (yes, billion) in revenue in 2015 – so it’s not to be taken lightly.
If this isn’t a hint to advertisers that they need to change tack (if they haven’t already), I don’t know what is.
Consumers are less trusting of commercials
Millenials are the demographic of the moment, but they’re also the most skeptical when it comes to ads. This study by Forbes shows that they are extremely picky when it comes to who they will and won’t listen to.
33% of those surveyed browsed blogs and social media before committing to a purchase to glean a more “authentic” idea of a product and to get real-life reviews without the mask of an ad.
This is where the idea of solution before product has come into play – brands literally have to prove themselves before consumers will even consider buying from them.
It’s a far cry from the days of the Marlboro Man, who just had to sit looking moody on a horse (just imagine what he’d have to do now to build trust). less
A hobby is an activity that helps you spend time doing what you like doing. It gives you an opportunity to relax because the activity is not forced on you, it is something that you get pleasure from. Find ways of finding yourself a hobby - something that ... moreA hobby is an activity that helps you spend time doing what you like doing. It gives you an opportunity to relax because the activity is not forced on you, it is something that you get pleasure from. Find ways of finding yourself a hobby - something that you will enjoy doing.
Hobbies are good for you. They are a great way to unleash your creativity. They are a great way to help you fight boredom. A hobby allows you to follow your passion and do something constructive with your time. It gives you room to relax and de-stress. A hobby can help keep your mind alert. Spending time indulging in a hobby lets you have that precious 'me time' that everyone craves for. A hobby can also turn into a profitable business venture if you use your skills properly and learn the right techniques to market them.If you are one of those people who does not have a steady leisure activity that you like spending your free time on, then it could be a challenge to suddenly begin an activity as a hobby. You will need to find an activity that interests you and fits your routine, lifestyle and personality. So, here is a guide that can help you home in on an activity to start as a hobby.
What is a hobby?
Before we delve into activities that can be pursued as a hobby, let us first understand what a hobby is. A hobby is something that you enjoy doing, because it is fun and creative, but most importantly because you like doing it. It is not something that is forced on you. Nor is it something that you do for a living. A hobby is something that you indulge in when you are free. It is not something that you do out of compulsion. You do it because of the sheer enjoyment it gives you. For a number of people, these days' leisure activities are limited to viewing the idiot box or being on the social media. What a shame that is, because there is so much more that can be done, in terms of cultivating a hobby, than viewing or interacting on the social media. Compare this to say running or creating something with your hands, there are real benefits to the latter activities.
Tips to start a hobby
If you do not have a hobby, you could do well with some ideas on how or where to start. But, you know what, ideas coming from me, might not interest you, because a hobby must be something that you like doing, something that is close to your heart. So, I am not going to push ideas into your head, instead, I am going to gently help you probe the recess of your mind and help you find something that can be a good hobby for you.
Roll back the years
Let's help you discover things that you liked doing. There definitely must be a few things that you liked doing when life was carefree. What was it? Were you artistically inclined - you may have enjoyed sewing dresses for your dolls or enjoyed drawing or painting. Were you the outdoors type, who enjoyed riding your bicycle or playing in the streets with your neighbourhood friends? These are things that you can be polished and cultivated into a hobby. For one they are things that you liked doing. Secondly, it is easy to begin where you left off. Imagine using your needlework skills to create beautiful things or turning your passion for the outdoors into a hobby that doubles up as a fitness routine. Look into your past and sift through all the things you liked doing. Don't limit yourself to things you liked doing, also consider things that you always wanted to do. Now is the time to live that dream. Did you ever look at something, sometimes in life, and had wished that you could do it? Did you want to learn to play a musical instrument? Did you want to be able to bake? Begin with it now, turn that dream into a hobby.
Search for something to do
What if you had a boring past, and had no time for frivolous activities, and dreams of wanting to try out new things; what do you do then? Well, you cannot just sit back and moan about not having ideas for a hobby popping up in your head. You need to stimulate your brain and find things that interest you. Surf the net for ideas, read blogs of things that other people like to do, read magazines for inspiration, look around you and you will find yourself drawn to things that you see. Did you like those beautiful candles being sold in a home décor store? Do you know you can craft candles at home? Would you be interested in turning it into a hobby? Did you enjoy a TV show on dance? Would you like to learn the contemporary or classical dance form? Do you like the outdoors? How about joining a cycling club or a Zumba or swimming class? Are you fascinated by plants? Why not get your hands dirty - try growing some exotic plants or turn bonsai making into a hobby? Explore and you will be pleasantly surprised at the opportunities around you.
Begin with baby steps
Chances are that you have a busy schedule, with every hour, if not every minute, accounted for. To be able to fit in a new activity into your routine will require juggling of time. The thing is that most of us do not manage our time well, and can actually spare a few hours in our day, for things that we like doing or in this case want to do. Cut the amount of time you spend watching television for instance and designate that time to your new hobby. You'll be surprised at how gratifying this little switch can be. Begin with small steps; you don't have to devote long stretches of time to the activity. Just half an hour a day, doing what you like doing, can be a good way to start.
Find a suitable time
Any activity that you start with, will at first seem a like Herculean task, even if you enjoy it, for the simple reason that it is different from what you are used to doing every day. It is best that you select a time when you are alone to indulge in the new activity. You will be better able to concentrate and enjoy the activity if there are no external disturbances.
Make a serious effort
Unless it is something that you have done before or possessed some knowledge of how it is done you will find that you need help to make the transition of turning a passion into a hobby. For example, you cannot suddenly decide to take up gardening as a hobby if you do not know the basics about caring for plants. You'll not be able to grow strawberries in a container if you don't know how to. So, what do you do? You can get some books on what you like doing and they can be your guide. There are some amazing DIY videos on Youtube that you can watch to get the techniques right. You can also read blogs posts of other enthusiasts and learn from their experiences. How about enrolling in a hobby class and learning from professionals. The idea is to learn how to do things right and master the art.
The final word
If you are the impatient kind avoid activities where the results are not instant. Don't try your hand at bonsai; you will perhaps lose interest in the activity. Keep exploring until you find that one thing that gives you pleasure. Know that you might not find something that you would like to do, right away. Don't let that stop you, keep trying new things and you'll one day discover that one thing that you like better than the rest of the stuff.Who knows you could eventually get so good at what you do that you could also begin to earn profit from your little hobby. I have a friend who made candles as a hobby and now conducts candle making classes. There is someone I know who sells bonsai plants that she grows in her little garden. Another friend takes orders for birthday and wedding cakes. Every one of these people turned their hobby into a profitable business. However, there are also some who do what they like doing just to keep themselves occupied. When are you starting a hobby? less
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December 12, 2017
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Theater of the World by Huang Yong Ping (Credit: Huang Yong Ping/Guggenheim Museum)
In the same month, the Louvre announced that it was scrapping plans to display a work that risked sparking outrage – a sexually explicit sculpture b... moreTheater of the World by Huang Yong Ping (Credit: Huang Yong Ping/Guggenheim Museum)
In the same month, the Louvre announced that it was scrapping plans to display a work that risked sparking outrage – a sexually explicit sculpture by the Dutch artist and designer Joep Van Lieshout. A crude, 40ft (12m) tall Lego-like structure that appears to depict a man having sex with a four-legged creature, Domestikator was due to feature in the Jardin des Tuileries in Paris, alongside the Louvre, as part of the annual International Contemporary Art Fair. (The Pompidou Centre has subsequently agreed to show the work.)
Appalled by the initial censure of his Domestikator, van Lieshout (who insists his sculpture is not fundamentally sexual in theme, but a comment on man’s interference with nature) condemned as hypocritical the Louvre’s late decision. "In the Louvre”, he points out, “there are paintings and sculptures where there are nude women, rape and bestiality, that are much more explicit than my piece.” Whether or not one is offended by van Lieshout’s sculpture, there is no denying that the Louvre does indeed have its share of racy works – from Fragonard’s painting The Shirt Withdrawn, which features a bedroom tussle between a winged nymph and a naked woman whose bottom appears to be freshly spanked, to Ingres’s portrait of a concubine, La Grand Odalisque – scurrilous when it was first exhibited in 1814.
La Grande Odalisque by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (Credit: Wikipedia)
But who now blushes at the sight of either Fragonard’s or Ingres’s work, however shocking they may have seemed when first created? Students of art history will no doubt appreciate the timing of the recent controversies, coinciding as they do with the centenary of one of the most famous instances of censorship in modern cultural history – the decision taken in 1917 by The Society of Independent Artists in New York to violate its own bylaws in banning from display Marcel Duchamp’s groundbreaking conceptual sculpture, Fountain, a urinal that the French artist had turned on its side and cryptically signed “R Mutt”.
In the century since Duchamp’s controversial 'readymade' caused a stir, the story of art has been punctuated by a string of scandalous works that inflamed public debate and forced gallery goers to reflect on what is and isn’t worthy of critical regard. What follows are 10 works that shocked contemporary sensibilities and helped redefine the very essence of art.
Erased de Kooning Drawing, Robert Rauschenberg, 1953
Erased de Kooning Drawing, Robert Rauschenberg, 1953 (Credit: Wikipedia)
Detractors of Duchamp’s Fountain, who felt his urinal represented the flushing away of art altogether, would have found it difficult to rally behind American artist Robert Rauschenberg’s irreverent Erased de Kooning Drawing, undertaken in 1953. Curious to know if a work of art could be created by removing marks from a surface with an eraser, rather than adding them with pencil, brush or chisel as artists conventionally do, Rauschenberg convinced his friend, the Dutch-American abstractionist Willem de Kooning, to sacrifice a recent drawing of his to the experiment. The result is a paper scrubbed free of any discernible picture, challenging observers to decide whether the image-less image is an image at all, or whether the real work on display is the empty frame that surrounds the absence – a sculptural holding place for endless artistic loss.
Piero Manzoni, Merda d’Artista, 1961
If Duchamp’s unused receptacle of human waste could be embraced by the art world as an aesthetic object in its own right, it is perhaps unsurprising that, at some stage, an artist would experiment with excrement itself and attempt to pass it off as a work of art. In 1961, Italian avant-garde artist Piero Manzoni (who, a year earlier, left observers aghast when he presented a balloon filled with his own breath as a work of art), did just that – cramming into 90 tin cans, 2700 grams of his own faeces. The work is thought to be an elaborate response to a derisory comment that his father, who owned a canning factory, once made to him, likening his work to excrement. Last summer, one of his son’s crappy cans sold at auction for €275,000 (£245,000) .
Allen Jones, Chair, 1969
Allen Jones, Chair, 1969 (Credit: Tate)
Unveiled to accusations that its creator, British Pop artist Allen Jones, treats objects like women and vice versa, Chair (along with companion pieces Hatstand and Table) contorted scantily clad female mannequins into an un-ergonomically engineered suite of scurrilously lewd furniture. On International Women’s Day in March 1986, the work was doused with paint stripper by a pair of activists appalled by the sculpture’s chauvinist sensibility. The acid ate away at the face and neck, melting the awkward somersault in which the PVC work was forever frozen into a desperate duck-and-roll.
Judy Chicago, Dinner Party, 1979
Consisting of 39 place settings commemorating the contribution of women to cultural history (from Sappho to Virginia Woolf), US artist Judy Chicago’s triangularly constructed banquet table has been both acclaimed for its pioneering perspective and derided for its shocking vulgarity. The work is dominated by almost two score hand-painted china plates, many of which are decorated with a blossoming vulva-like butterfly symbol. Believing that the work has “too many vaginas”, contemporary British artist Cornelia Parker scorned the installation in The Guardian as “all about Judy Chicago's ego rather than the poor women she's supposed to be elevating”. “We're all reduced to vaginas, which is a bit depressing.”
Richard Serra, Tilted Arc, 1981
Richard Serra, Tilted Arc, 1981 (Credit: Alamy)
More than one iconic wall fell in 1989. In the dead of night on 15 March, eight months before sledgehammers began pounding the Berlin wall, a team of construction workers descended on Federal Plaza in New York City to slice into pieces a 120ft (36m)-long, 12ft (3.6m)-high, controversial barricade of steel that had been erected eight years earlier. Contending that the work, a ground-breaking sculpture by the American artist Richard Serra, provided shelter for terrorists, vermin and vandals alike, a jury concluded the minimalist sculpture should be removed and hauled off to a warehouse.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Surrounded Islands, 1983
Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Surrounded Islands, 1983 (Credit: Christo and Jeanne-Claude)
Not everyone who looked upon the 11 islands in Miami’s Biscayne Bay, skirted surreally in pink polypropylene fabric for two weeks in May 1983 by the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude, was seduced by its fairytale magic. Environmentalists protested the work’s installation, worried about the long-term effect of the 6.5m square feet (603,870 square meters) of synthetic plastic stretched across the habitats of manatees and nesting ospreys. The dialogue that constructing the work generated, which forced local officials and residents to discuss the fragility of the environment in which they lived, was among the artists’ aims.
Marc Quinn, Self, 1991
Marc Quinn, Self, 1991 (Credit: Marc Quinn)
Every five years, over the course of five months, British artist Marc Quinn siphons off five litres of his own blood and spills them into a translucent, refrigerated mould of his face. The result is an ever-emerging series of self-portraits into which the artist can legitimately claim to have poured more of himself than any artist that came before him. For some observers, Quinn’s ongoing series Self is nothing more than a gruesome and vampiric stunt. For others, the work embodies a poignant and daring contribution to the tradition of self-representation to which such great artists as Rembrandt, Van Gogh and Cindy Sherman have contributed – one that profoundly highlights the fragility of being.
Tracey Emin, My Bed, 1998
Tracey Emin, My Bed, 1998 (Credit: Alamy)
Though the bed, as an archetypal object, has served as an indispensable prop in some of the greatest works of Western art – from Titian’s Venus of Urbino to Van Gogh’s Bedroom in Arles, from Goya’s alternately nude and dressed Majas to Henry Fuseli’s devilish The Nightmare – public outrage at the installation by British artist Tracey Emin of her dishevelled My Bed for the 1998 Turner Prize Exhibition was intense and sustained. The site of a depressive episode in the artist’s life, surrounded by the material debris of a tousled psyche, the rumpled bed quickly became Exhibit A for those contending that contemporary art had lost its way. Defenders of the work were surprised that, more than 80 years after Duchamp’s urinal, a messy bed could spark such outrage and wondered whether the real objection was that a woman should so brazenly set up residency in a man’s museum.
David Černý, Shark, 2005
David Černý, Shark, 2005 (Credit: David Černý)
Riffing off of British artist Damien Hirst’s audacious installation The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991), which featured a howling shark suspended in a formaldehyde solution, Czech artist David Černý’s arresting vitrine dared to float before visitors a hogtied sculpture of the deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. For some, the work came too close to casting Hussein in the role of victim. For others, the piece was gratuitously graphic. The scheduled exhibition of the controversial work at a museum in Middelkerke, Belgium, in early 2006 was ultimately cancelled, by decree of the town’s mayor Michel Landuyt, out of fear “that certain population groups would find the work too provocative".
Paul McCarthy, Tree, 2014
Paul McCarthy, Tree, 2014 (Credit: AFP)
Occasionally, the urge to censor a controversial work has been acted upon by offended observers rather than cautious curators. Such was the case in October 2014, when American artist Paul McCarthy’s huge inflatable sculpture Tree, erected as a Christmas display on the Place Vendôme in Paris, was fatally toppled by vandals and subsequently deflated. Once the sculpture’s close resemblance to the shape of a sex prop, the butt plug, was pointed out by commentators – a kinship that was, then, impossible to un-see – there was no protecting the colossal work from assault. Nor did the artist himself escape unscathed. An outraged attendee at the sculpture’s installation confronted McCarthy and slapped his face three times before zipping off, like a popped balloon, into the crowd. less
Smartphones will become obsolete, replaced by a new generation of wearable communication devices that will change the way we interact with the world.
Today, nearly eight in 10 Americans own a smartphone, and we've become accustomed to us... more
Smartphones will become obsolete, replaced by a new generation of wearable communication devices that will change the way we interact with the world.
Today, nearly eight in 10 Americans own a smartphone, and we've become accustomed to using them for everything from listening to music, taking pictures, reading news and posting on social media to shopping and making financial transactions. For many people, smartphones have taken the place of once common everyday implements like tape measures, flashlights and wristwatches.
Smartphones have transformed everyday life so much that it's easy to forget that they only became popular a little more than 10 years ago. That's when Apple released the iPhone, which combined mobile internet access and computing power with a multi-touch screen interface, making it possible to do pretty much everything by tapping, flicking and pinching with your thumb and forefinger. A recent survey found that smartphone users now spend about five hours a day using their devices, which is why it's tough to walk down a crowded sidewalk in any major city without bumping into someone fixated upon his or her smartphone screen.
But with technological progress moving at broadband speed these days, it's strange to think that the smartphone as we know it has a limited life expectancy. A 2015 survey of smartphone users across the world by Swedish communications technology and services company Ericsson found that one in two expected that the smartphone would become obsolete by 2020.
We don't yet have a suitably zeitgeist-y name for those gadgets, but it's a pretty safe bet that they won't be palm-sized rectangles with glass screens — or any screen at all, for that matter. And they may not even be a single gadget. Brad Berens, chief strategy officer for the Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, predicts that the smartphone will give way to personal area networks — clusters of tiny gadgets concealed in beads in a necklace, or built into eyeglasses or contact lenses.
Such devices will use VR and AR to project information into our field of vision, eliminating the need for a screen. And just as we control apps on today's smartphones by moving our fingers, we'll be able to manipulate our next-generation personal area networks through voice commands or by gesturing in the air — perhaps with the help of haptic technology that simulates the sensory feedback of touching actual objects. Typing may not ever become a completely extinct skill, but it may someday become as rare as, say, someone who writes in elegant longhand with a fountain pen.
"Just as I can't type as fast as my kids, they won't be able to do the haptic gestures of the future as fast as the kindergarteners of today eventually will be able to do," Uldrich says.
Next Generation Intelligent Assistants
But increasingly, we won't have to input as much information as we once did, because next-generation intelligent assistants — imagine a vastly more intuitive version of Siri, Alexa or Cortana — will learn to figure out what we want to know or do, sometimes before we realize it ourselves. Uldrich predicts that in the near future, our personal gadgetry will study our eye movements in order to make predictions. "If we stare at something for two seconds, it will tell that we need more information about it," he says.
Berens envisions that the intelligent assistants of the future continually will whisper in our ears and project messages that only we can see. That might help us in a lot of ways — if we encounter a person and can't recall his or her name, for example, "It's John Smith" may flash before our eyes to remind us.
It's also conceivable that our future devices' intelligent assistants eventually may interact with other intelligent assistants, possibly taking the place of some of our interaction with actual people. That's a prospect that Berens finds both interesting and disturbing.
"We've already seen people using digital technologies to avoid directly interacting with some people while interacting more with other people," he says. "On the bus or subway, people play with their phones or deal with far-flung people via social media rather than chat with the person next to them. Teenagers prefer texting to talking on the phone. Dating apps like Tinder make it easier to meet people without the awkward need to gather up your courage to approach a stranger."
"Some of this is good, but it also means that people can increasingly live in their own little worlds, inside what author Eli Pariser has dubbed 'filter bubbles,' where you don't need to recognize that there are other points of view about things," Berens says.
But next-generation personal communication devices may also change us in other ways that we haven't yet envisioned. As with the smartphone, we'll have to start using them to find out. less
Is Elvis still alive? What happens in Area 51? Who really killed JFK? And are our politicians and leaders in fact shapeshifting reptilian humanoids?
“Fake news and consp...