LOS ANGELES (KNX) — As new details continue to unravel about the Astroworld stampede that killed 10 people, many have taken to TikTok and Twitter to suggest what happened was the work of the devil.
From the stage’s position to the shirt Travis Scott wore that night, many people took to social media to spew their beliefs of a demonic spirit causing what happened.
“Look I’m a big fan of Travis Scott but this is some demonic a** s**t it’s making me rethink some things like is this what hell looks like this video gives me chills,” one person tweeted.
“Travis Scott sold his soul to the devil. Astro World was a BLOOD SACRIFICE,” another tweeted.
“What we can see is that a lot of comments, talking about devil worship stuff started popping up in victim and survivor testimonials of Astroworld,” Jessica Lucas, a reporter for Input Magazine told KNX In Depth. “So people were sharing their experiences being in crowds, and I guess their viewers were suggesting that this came down to some sort of satanic rituals.”
While TikTok has already taken action to get these videos down, how did these conspiracy theories get out of control so fast? Where do conspiracy theories start?
Ali Breland, reporter at Mother Jones, told KNX In Depth conspiracy theories are usually how process traumatic events.
“It speaks to how the lingua franca of processing major trauma events in the news right now is to just come up with wild conspiracy theories to sort of rationalize and contextualize things that are very hardtop grasp and process,” he said.
“Conspiracy theories have been used to explain things like 9/11 and things like that, but I think right now we’re at this weird point where every time something big happens it’s like someone’s controlling it. Someone’s pulling the strings, whether it’s the illuminati doing 5G, Bill Gates with coronavirus, etc.”
Both Breland and Lucas find that when it comes to how conspiracy theories entice the most curious of social media users, the algorithm plays a huge role.
“You see a lot of testimonials online of people saying they’re almost become addicted to Astroworld content and have this hunger to find out more,” Lucas explained. “So they know the deeper they swipe, the more they’ll go down this rabbit hole.”
“There’s a lot of people that have to be susceptible to that kind of thing, that maybe they wouldn’t have seen this or otherwise thought about it that deeply, but they’re ripping through Tiktok or they’re on Twitter and the algorithm shows them these kinds of things,” Breland added. “That kind of explains how it moved on.”
Travis Scott is facing multiple lawsuits for his role in the deadly crowd stampede. Scott announced he would pay for the victims’ funeral costs.
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