# Tin Foil Hats Tin Foil Hats are aluminum-foil caps first described in Julian Huxley's 1927 short story 'The Tissue-Culture King,' where characters wear them to block telepathy, and the item became an online visual joke mocking conspiracy theorists. By July 2014, 'Weird Al' Yankovic put a shiny foil hat at the center of his 'Foil' music video, with the singer donning one to stop the Illuminati from reading his mind. ## Origin Tin foil hats first appeared as a mind-shielding fashion piece in Julian Huxley's 1927 science fiction short story 'The Tissue-Culture King,' where the narrator and his assistants fashion caps of metal foil to protect themselves from telepathic interference[1]. The story was initially published in the Yale Review in April 1926, and in it the narrator builds a 'tin pulpit' alongside the foil caps to reduce the mental effects of experiments on his own crew[6]. - **Platform:** Science fiction literature / Reddit (viral spread) - **Creator:** Julian Huxley (fictional concept); online joke originator unknown - **Date:** 1927 ## Overview A tin foil hat usually appears online as a crinkled aluminum helmet, sometimes shaped into a point or wrapped flat against the skull, worn by someone pretending to fear mind-reading rays or government surveillance[3]. In threads, the hat works as a visual label for any argument that sounds paranoid, and commenters often tell an original poster to 'put your tin foil hat back on' when a discussion drifts into alleged cover-ups. Part of the running joke comes from a 2005 Massachusetts Institute of Technology study that measured aluminum helmets and reported they boosted certain radio frequencies instead of attenuating them[2]. Writers covering fringe history tie the symbol back to Huxley's story and to older folklore about secret societies, which is why the metal cap became the stock prop any time a character is coded as a paranoid believer[6]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Tin Foil Hats? Tin Foil Hats are aluminum-foil caps worn as a prop in jokes and parody videos to mock conspiracy theorists, based on the old belief that metal headwear can block telepathy and radio signals[3]. ### Where did Tin Foil Hats come from? The concept first appeared in Julian Huxley's 1927 science fiction story 'The Tissue-Culture King,' where characters wear metal foil caps to block telepathic interference[1]. ### What does Tin Foil Hats mean? Online, labelling something a 'tin foil hat' claim means it sounds paranoid or unfounded, and the hat itself is a visual tag for stereotyped conspiracy theorists[2]. ### How do you use Tin Foil Hats? People crinkle a sheet of aluminum into a dome or cone, photograph themselves wearing it, and often add a caption that mocks a fringe belief, as Redditor sammikins666 did with her kitten in 2013[4]. ### Is Tin Foil Hats still popular? Tin Foil Hats are a classic joke that still appears in comment threads whenever a user floats an unlikely theory, and the 2014 'Weird Al' Yankovic video 'Foil' is a widely known example of the gag[3]. ## References 1. [https://www.businessinsider.com/origin-of-the-term-tin-foil-hat-2013-6]() 2. [https://web.archive.org/web/20100708230258/https://people.csail.mit.edu/rahimi/helmet/]() 3. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/tin-foil-hats]() 4. [https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/1n0zrf/i_put_a_tin_foil_hat_on_my_cat_and_this_is_what/]() 5. [https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/99dhe/mit_researchers_conclude_that_tin_foil_hats/]() 6. [https://www.in5d.com/the-history-of-the-tin-foil-hat.html]() 7. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caPd2iEObfo]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/tin-foil-hats Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library