Photo: Kathy Hutchins / Shutterstock
All together now: What is happening?!
By Olivia Jakiel — Written on Dec 17, 2020
Chet Hanks: the new age hero we didn’t need, but got anyway.
In case you were unfamiliar, beloved actor Tom Hanks has four children: Colin Hanks and Elizabeth Ann Hanks, who he shares with his first wife, and his two sons with Rita Wilson, Truman Hanks, and rapper Chet Hanks.
One scroll through Chet Hanks’ social media will show you that Chet is a little unconventional when it comes to the content he shares, like a November post where he wrote that he hasn’t “felt this amped since I bought some molly off a Romanian Gypsy at an underground rave in Greece a few years ago.”
Recently, Chet Hanks has been promoting some interesting 12/21 conspiracies on his social channels, and while somewhat entertaining, what he’s said is truly baffling.
The conspiracies have also been promoted by Pastor Paul Begely — particularly, the 12/21 “End of the World” theory — and is gaining interest among social media users everywhere.
What are the 12/21 conspiracy theories making the rounds?
Here’s what you need to know about the 12/21 theories in and of themselves, what Chet Hanks is saying about them, and how social media fans everywhere are reacting to his claims about the upcoming day.
Pastor Paul Begely made the claims about 12/21 in a YouTube video in June.
Didn’t we already go through this with Y2K in 2000 and “the end of the Mayan calendar” in 2012?
Pastor Paul Begely, who uploaded a YouTube video in June about the theory, claims that the world is going to end on December 21 this year. Begley cited the Mayan calendar, along with the alignment of Jupiter and Saturn, whose rare conjunction forms the "Bethlehem star,” as evidence for his claims:
“It will be the closest Jupiter and Saturn have been since 1623 and it won't even come that close again for another 500 years. So this is so rare and it's going to be on the winter solstice.
It's going to be on December 21, 2020. The Mayans are now reorganizing and saying this could certainly be the end of the world as we know it."
Begley has approximately zero evidence to back up his baseless claims and it’s also worth noting that Dec. 21 happens to be his birthday, and he’s also made doomsday predictions before.
However, that doesn’t mean social media users everywhere haven’t hopped on the 12/21 conspiracy bandwagon, too.
In fact, some of the other conspiracies about the monumental date include that some “spiritual alien s***” is about to go down (according to Hanks), and there’s even a claim that Black people will get superpowers once the date rolls around.
Chet Hanks is a firm believer that there will be an alien takeover on 12/21.
In a series of Instagram Stories, Hanks revealed that he truly believes that “some spiritual alien s***” is going to go down on December 21.
“They say some spiritual alien s*** is going to go down on Dec 21 if so I need the aliens to stop playin and come get me ASAP cuz this s*** is lame bro!” he wrote in an Instagram Story.
“I been ready for the mothership wtf is takin y’all so long?!!!!!” he added, before diving a little deeper into his 12/21 theory.
“Humanity deserves whatever we got coming,” he wrote. “On an individual level I think most people are pretty cool. But collectively as a whole we’re f*****. Just try to get your little bag or whatever and get off the grid as soon as you can.”
Hanks also added that it’s a “daily struggle not to lose” his mind “on you peons fr [for real],” and finished his conspiracy rant with, “Y’all don’t know the half of it.”
There is also a theory that Black people will gain superpowers on 12/21.
And this plays into social media users' responses to Chet Hanks’s 12/21 theory.
On Dec. 5, one Twitter user alleged that Black people’s DNA would be unlocked on 12/21, and that they would be able to “do things we thought were fiction.”
The tweet quickly made the rounds online, and in response to Chet Hanks’s rant about “spiritual alien s***” on 12/21, many social media users used it as a chance to seriously drag the rapper through the mud, mainly because of the accent he speaks in.
“Chet Hanks gonna lose his accent on December 21st,” one social media user tweeted, while another wrote, “I just KNOW chet hanks bout to be pressed when he don’t get powers on the 21st.”
Regardless of what everyone thinks is going to happen on December 21 this year, we can likely all agree on one thing: while this year may have been the most unprecedented year in world history, the last thing we saw coming was an Indiana pastor and Tom Hanks’s rapper son perpetuating some of the wildest conspiracy theories of the year on social media.
Or maybe ... that’s right on brand for 2020.
Olivia Jakiel is an editor and writer who covers celebrity and entertainment news. Follow her on Instagram and keep up with her zingers on Twitter.