Oooooh yes. Several group chats I'm on with family or kids I knew growing up are blowing up with "See, I told you!" I blame 80s AM non-religious talk radio for this one.
Even putting aside the crazies that do passionately believe in this stuff, a lot of fairly regular people, who may not necessarily truly believe it, still think about it as a sort of "But what if it's true?" mindset, which still plays into the issue GP describes.
Regardless, if you've not seen the existence of or any episode of Ancient Aliens (or Finding Bigfoot) you'll see what i'm saying: some of these spectacles are more for fun than for politics, because they can be outright funny.
