Hot take: Most 'FEMA camps' stories are just old Reddit posts recycled from 2012

I was scrolling through Facebook yesterday and saw a post about a new FEMA camp being built in rural Oregon. It had thousands of shares. I ran the image through a reverse search and found it was actually just a warehouse construction project in Topeka from 2011. The text was copy-pasted from a 4chan thread. Took me about 3 minutes total. Has anyone else noticed these exact same stories pop up every 4 years like clockwork?

3 comments

3 Comments

henrycooper2mo agoMost Upvoted

Had a buddy send me a link to some "proof" about FEMA building detention centers in Montana last summer. I clicked it and recognized the photos from a viral post my dad shared back on MySpace in 2009. The building was actually just an old Walmart being renovated into a community center. My buddy got real quiet when I showed him the timestamp on the original article. It's like these things have a life cycle where they just come back around every few years with a new coat of paint.

hall.nina2mo ago

Classic conspiracy recycling, same junk different decade.

caleb2621mo ago

And that's the thing, once you see it once you start spotting it everywhere. I remember when the Jade Helm 15 stuff was going around, people were posting satellite photos of "secret military bases" that were just old missile silos from the 60s getting turned into data centers. Same with the whole "government shooting ranges for FEMA camps" thing, turned out to be a paintball field that had been on Google Maps for a decade. It's like these stories hit a certain age, get recycled through a new generation on a new platform, and people treat them like fresh news. Your buddy probably wasn't trying to be sneaky, he just got caught in that loop without realizing how old that trail actually is.