A lot of conspiracy-minded folks are a bit in a tizzy about a Weather Channel social media blitz today reminding people that we’re about to set our clocks back. The Weather Channel said to get used to eating dinner in the pitch black, along with the song “The Sound of Silence,” performed by Art Garfunkel and Paul Simon, playing in the background on their TikTok and other social media feeds.
It’s a poignant and stark reminder of the upcoming winter season and the time of darkness that we enter. But because we are who we are now, conspiracy theories are arising that The Weather Channel knows something we don’t. That they’re trying to prepare us for a mass blackout of the power grid or some sort of massive event in which people die by the millions due to darkness. Thrown in there for good measure is the Mountain Dew flavor Pitch Black, because apparently Mountain Dew may know something too.
Of course, the reality of the situation is that Daylight Saving Time ends on November 1, 2026, and we’re going to be setting our clocks back one hour. That means the sun will be setting earlier, the evenings will be darker, and many of us will be eating dinner with absolutely no sunlight coming through the windows. It’s something that happens every single year, and The Weather Channel seems to have simply found a rather melancholy and humorous way to remind everyone of it. There’s no evidence that they’re warning us about a massive power grid failure, an impending catastrophe, or the deaths of millions of people.
It’s interesting on social media, in the era we live in, you can’t do much without others reading way into things. A simple reminder about the clocks changing has somehow turned into a possible warning about the end of civilization. A song about silence suddenly becomes a clue, the words “pitch black” become a warning, and a Mountain Dew flavor somehow gets thrown into the mix as though the people making soft drinks are sitting on some sort of classified information about the future of humanity.
Perhaps if The Weather Channel warns us about eating dinner in bright light in the spring, people may worry it’s about an impending solar flare that will destroy the planet.
You just can’t win on the socials.
