A TV reporter went viral last week after online conspiracy theorists accused her of being a “lizard person,” but she’s leaning into the madness.
“The internet comes in tsunami swells,” Molly Martinez told HuffPost. “This will blow over.”
Martinez, a journalist in the Washington bureau of local TV chain Gray Television, was seen on camera June 19 in the White House press room smiling at her friend. The original footage glitches, making Martinez’s eyes appear to go all white. Conspiracy theorists saw this as proof she is a lizard person, someone they believe is secretly controlling the government.
For the record, Martinez is not a lizard person and is not part of an elite cabal controlling the world. She said the footage first went viral about a month ago, but it gained steam again last week when social media accounts like WorldStarHipHop and Concerned Citizen — which have a combined 6 million followers on X — picked it up.
Martinez said when the video of her first went viral, people misidentified her as a congressional staffer who became a conspiracy target in 2023 after she was seen on camera mouthing words as Stacey Plaskett, the delegate representing the U.S. Virgin Islands, spoke. Martinez didn’t want that staffer to continue to get doxxed, so she outed herself with a post that read, “This is objectively the funniest thing that’s ever happened to me.”
People started replying to Martinez’s post with comments, like, “Congratulations on becoming the latest attempted distraction from the Epstein files” and “Not denying the allegations though… Interesting. Very interesting.”
“It’s anything on the internet, right?” she told HuffPost. “It’s the most horrendous things you’ve ever read. And then sometimes it’s really funny.”
The concept of lizard people was popularized by David Icke in 1999, when he published an antisemitic screed that claimed lizard people ruled the world. Since then, it’s been used as a joke and has merged with other conspiracies. In 2011, on a radio show, comedian Louis C.K. asked Donald Rumsfeld, former secretary of defense, if he was a lizard person. In 2013, a Secret Service member for President Barack Obama was accused of being one.
The conspiracy theory became more darkly relevant after a man, who reportedly believed in lizard people as well as conspiracies around 5G mobile service, set off a car bomb in Nashville in 2020. The conspiracy theory also gained traction when a woman on a plane, later identified as Tiffany Gomas, went viral for pointing somewhere and declaring, “That motherfucker is not real.” Some people believed the “motherfucker” in question was a lizard person.
A 2013 survey reported that 4% of Americans believe lizard people control the world.
Martinez told HuffPost she has sympathy for anyone who believes in a conspiracy theory.
“I empathize with people who turn to conspiracies, because I feel like that’s a way for people to find community in chaos,” Martinez said, “and [the conspiracy theories] can really feel like a life raft, like it’s empowering. ‘We have this knowledge that no one else has, and everyone’s turning this blind eye.’ I think ultimately it comes from a place of fear. So I never want to punch down on somebody who I think genuinely is afraid, so I’m trying to sort of keep that in mind. It doesn’t make sense to me, but it obviously makes perfect sense to them.”