Completely normal people would never go to Disneyland, a gigantic fake mountain in California. Ever.

I mean, you could be interested in the cultural phenomenon, the tourist trap stuff nearby, and, at least at one point, the military exercises that you could see and hear.

Did anyone (unauthorized) really show up at the base? It seems unlikely given there is a large buffer zone and armed guards responding to people who violate it, last I heard. It's kind of like Mordor, one does not just walk in.

Also, I vaguely recall the government annexing the nearest mountain that people used to view the base from.

I didn't participate in whatever the recent thing was, but I went out there to sightsee back in the 90s. There was a guy who went to live in Rachel, and wrote about the conspiracy theorists and general cultural aspects and feuded with the proprietors of the Little A'le'inn. I think I remember he wrote a newsletter that was distributed on AOL.

Lots of people showed up at the entrance gate, which was widely reported, but nobody went [far] past them.

"Showing up at the gate(s)" just seems odd. I wouldn't think there's anything to see there.

"In 1995, the federal government expanded the exclusionary area around the base to include nearby mountains that had hitherto afforded the only decent overlook of the base, prohibiting access to 3,972 acres (16.07 km2) of land formerly administered by the Bureau of Land Management."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_51

(I remember reading about this in the newsletter I mentioned, at the time)

> I wouldn't think there's anything to see there.

There isn't, it's just that "raid area 51" went viral and was basically a meme meetup. The point was to get photos of the fictional raid, which were mostly just people standing outside the fences.

Of course there’s nothing to see there. That’s why “completely normal, non-conspiratorial” people would never attend such an event.

To be clear, I’m in no way harping on non-normal people or even conspiratorial people. Just taking issue with the idea that this was a sufficiently unremarkable occurrence for the population who attended to be anything like a normal slice of the American population.

The overwhelming majority of people there are utterly banal engineers that like the paycheck.

Holy cow do people mistake both the scale and ordinariness of groom lake: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_(airline)

I think you’re missing the thread of this conversation.

We are discussing civilians who have no official nor unofficial relationship with Area 51/military/government/defense/intelligence/etc showing up at the gates to participate in a “Rush the gates to free the aliens” meme event.

I'm not missing it, I just think it's pointless jackassery.