User:The Almightey Drill/sandbox2

LINK TO SANDBOX 3

"Ted Cruz is the Zodiac Killer" is an Internet meme in the shape of a mock conspiracy theory suggesting that American Senator and Presidential candidate Ted Cruz was the Zodiac Killer, an unidentified Californian serial killer of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Those who circulate the meme do not honestly believe that Cruz, born in 1970, was the killer.

Origin and spread
A January 2016 investigation by Miles Klee of The Daily Dot found the first use of the meme to be by a Twitter user in March 2013, as Cruz was speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference and vowing to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The meme was not repeated until November 2014, by another Twitter user writing about Cruz's proposal against net neutrality.

It continued in obscurity up to February 2016, when another Twitter user used Photoshop to edit a picture of a Republican debate in order to include "Is Ted Cruz the Zodiac Killer?" in the interactive ticker at the bottom. That month, "is ted cruz the zodiac killer" was the second highest suggestion in Google's autocomplete for "is ted"; but by April it was not in the autocomplete at all. News.com.au writer Matthew Dunn suggested that Google was censoring the search term, showing evidence that it got 89% of total searches when compared to other terms in the autocomplete.

In April 2016, it was written that the meme "has a following. A Facebook group named for the meme has more than 27,000 members. A Google search turns up 621,000 hits, including exploratory articles by some of the biggest news publications on the web".

In popular culture
After the edited image showing the question on Google trends, the meme spread into popular culture. Books about Cruz being the Zodiac Killer, including romantic ones, were listed on Amazon.com. Pro-choice activist Tim Faust sells t-shirts proclaiming Cruz to be the Zodiac Killer, and uses the revenue to help provide safe and affordable abortions to women in El Paso, Texas.

In February 2016, Public Policy Polling asked registered voters in Florida ahead of the Republican primary if they believed Cruz to be the Zodiac Killer; 10% believed and 28% were not sure. The other 62% did not think he was.

Comedian Larry Wilmore made references to the meme in his April 2016 routine at the White House Correspondent's Dinner, including a joke that Cruz was not campaigning to win the nomination, put to continue a murder spree.

Also that month, a cocktail named "Ted Cruz is the Zodiac Killer" went on sale at a dive bar in Montrose, Houston, garnished with plastic machetes. Its creator Julie Lozano discovered the meme through Facebook page Bernie Sanders' Dank Meme Stash.

Reception
Lindsey Martin, a Twitter user who helped circulate the meme, told NPR that she did so because it is "so obviously untrue", jokingly adding that she would be scared of repercussions if she were actually telling the truth. The Verge writer Kaitlyn Tiffany opined that some may consider the subject of the meme to be "distasteful and irresponsible, even dangerous", but she considers Cruz's statements on Planned Parenthood to be exactly like that. According to Lozano, who calls Cruz a "dangerous zealot", the point of the meme is to "[demonize] his character".