Crop circles go hand in hand with social media outrage, discord, social media outrage, bitchiness, social media outrage, jumping to conclusions, social media outrage and attempted public shaming. Oh, and social media OUTRAGE as well. Let’s not forget social media OUTRAGE either.

Old school cerealogist Colin Andrews has become the latest to play the game by releasing an audio recording from 1996 in which he engages circle maker Rob Irving in discussion. Andrews ‘asks Irving what he thinks in his quieter moments about the implications of deceiving native elders from around the world’ by making crop circles. (In case you’re wondering why Andrews is so concerned, he suggested that various races of people, including the Hopi native Americans, found symbolic meanings within circles. He’s also claiming Irving’s group Circlemakers.org are attempting to ‘re-write history to paint themselves in a better light.’) According to the guff caption accompanying the video, Irving’s ‘reply was outragious [sic] and irresponsible’.

My, someone has a bee in their bonnet. Anyway, here’s what Rob Irving has to say:

All anyone is doing is reacting to a set of shapes.

Outrageous! Irresponsible! Awful! The Croppie is shuddering with OUTRAGE!

Ignoring the racially insensitive undertones of Andrews’s video that are grounded in perceived western superiority, he seems to be failing to grasp a basic fact. No circle maker produces a formation and tells the world it was or is the work of extraterrestrials. Those individuals — whether Hopi elders, traffic wardens, cotton wool ball quality controllers … no matter who they are — who have believed in the alien origin of the circles have done so as a result of (a) their own personal thought processes and, in many cases, (b) also latching onto a paranormal narrative fed to them by the media. This latter group includes authors such as Colin Andrews.

Is this less to do with Circlemakers.org’s attempts to re-write history, or possibly more to do with Andrews’ own attempts to absolve himself of any responsibility from spreading a paranormal narrative which has influenced others? Let’s not forget it was Andrews who alerted the Hopi elders to the existence of crop circles! Andrews is outraged, outraged, by what he perceives as Irving’s deception, yet this is the man who sat, until very recently, on the origins of the iconic Crabwood circle for a good seventeen years. Who, exactly, is re-writing history?