About

Vatican Archives Raid is a parody of the satirical Facebook event Storm Area 51. Europeans and Redditors in general began planning places to storm after Storm Area 51 was over in July 2019 and eventually created a subreddit and discourse surrounding the potential findings after raiding the Vatican Archives.

Origin

On July 15th, 2019, imgur^[1] user JediDavid posted a Lisa Simpson Presentation that reads "Petition for us Europeans to raid the Vatican while the Americans raid Area 51 (shown below). The image received over 7,700 points and 148,800 views in two months.

Precursor

Storm Area 51, also known as the Area 51 Raid and Alienstock, is a satirical Facebook event that calls for an assembly of a flash mob to infiltrate the top-secret American military airbase in Lincoln County, Nevada, scheduled to commence at 3:00 a.m. on September 20th, 2019. Since its launch in late June, the Facebook page went viral and millions of people have signed up to attend.

Spread

On September 20th, 2019, Redditor angel-3316 posted an image describing the Vatican Archives as an option for Europeans to raid to r/dankmemes^[2] (shown below, left). The image received over 51,200 points (98% upvoted) in six days. Facebook^[3][5] users began creating various events and groups for raiding the Vatican archives and the subreddit r/VaticanRaid^[4] was established. On September 24th, Redditor Idk_to_put_here posted a Stranger Things image in reaction to a the Facebook event "Storm Vatican Secret Archives, They Can't Molest All of Us" to r/memes^[6] which gained over 18,800 points (95% upvoted) in two days (shown below right).

On September 24th, Redditor newaccount_whodis posted an image of a person running from a guard over water with the caption, "Me leaving the Vatican knowing how to walk over water" to r/dankmemes^[7] (shown below). The image accumulated over 88,800 points (94% upvoted) in two days.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References