tinfoil
Words nearby tinfoil
ABOUT THIS WORD
What is a tinfoil hat?
Tinfoil hat is a shorthand for saying someone believes in conspiracy theories, is paranoid, or is crazy more generally.
Where did the term tinfoil hat come from?
In the 19th century, a tinfoil hat was a kind of party hat. The phrase took a turn, though, in the 20th century. A 1920s sci-fi short story, âThe Tissue-Culture Kingâ by Julian Huxley, featured characters wearing âcaps of metal foilâ to evade mind-control waves.
Huxleyâs headwear illustrates the core concept of the tinfoil hat: it acts as a kind of Faraday cage to block various kinds of electromagnetic waves. We can find the specific phrase tinfoil hat in the 1980s, by which time it had become associated with individuals who would wear them in the belief they would protect them from nefarious rays seeking to surveil, brainwash, or otherwise influence them.
In the 1980â90s, tinfoil hat became a shorthand for a âconspiracy theoristââyou know, JFK, moon landing, and later, 9/11 truthers. A 1997 internet commenter observed that tinfoil hat was âthe oldest insultâ on Usenet.
Nevertheless, the tinfoil hat became a full-fledged trope in popular media in the 1990sâ2000s. In a 1999 episode of The Simpsons, Bart becomes a paranoid conspiracy theorist wearing a tinfoil hat because he fears Major League Baseball was spying on everyone. Spoiler alert: He was right.
In the 2002 film Signs, Mel Gibsonâs character and his family don tinfoil hats to keep aliens from reading their minds. In the late 1990s and 2000s, the cartoon Futurama regularly featured a tinfoil hat-wearing character with some really far-outâveritably cosmicâprophecies.
Musician Weird Al included a verse riffing on tinfoil hats and conspiracy theories in his 2014 parody song of Lordeâs âRoyals,â called âFOIL.â In a 2015 episode of the TV show Better Call Saul, a character wraps himself in space blankets to shield him from electromagnetic radiation; heâs threatened with being committed to a mental hospital.
How to use the term tinfoil hat
Tinfoil hat is widely used as an insult for acting crazy or believing in nonsense or “out-there” ideas, including conspiracy theories.
Yes Leo… it is unbelievable, in fact… most would call it a straight out lie, conspiracy theory. Do you have your tinfoil hat on today sir?#cdnpoli #TheCPCLostBoys https://t.co/Es1MVLjTym
— MichelleTypoQueen (@MichelletypoQ) September 15, 2018
People who suffer from genuine mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, have discussed wearing actual tinfoil hats when dealing with intrusive thoughts and hallucinations. A 2005 study showed, though, that a tinfoil hat actually amplifies radio frequencies instead of blocking them.
More examples of tinfoil hat:
âStudy finds conspiracy theories arenât all spread by tinfoil-hat-wearing craziesâ
âRT (headline), April 2018
Note
This content is not meant to be a formal definition of this term. Rather, it is an informal summary that seeks to provide supplemental information and context important to know or keep in mind about the termâs history, meaning, and usage.