ZOOMER DIARIES Everything is rigged in 2026

Recently, Spain won the 2026 World Cup final against Argentina, a result that was widely celebrated as the public opinion on Argentina generally swung negative.

Among the more justifiable points of criticism, such as racism and foul play, was a more interesting and less believable claim, that the 2026 FIFA World Cup tournament had been rigged in Argentina’s favor.

I don’t care much for the veracity of the claim than the existence of the claim itself. "Rigged" seems to have become an all-too-common excuse for anybody to fall back on, from election results to archaeological discoveries, and apparently now football.

Baseless claims on the internet, of course, are not new. I remember reading conspiracy theories online for entertainment growing up: Area 51, anti-vaxxers, flat earthers. Back then, they were the collective laughingstock of the Internet, relegated to backwater Facebook forums.

But I must admit, it’s not so funny now.

Older conspiracy theories about chemtrails or the antivax movement revolve around the distrust of the unknown, whether it be new technology or new values. Technological development and globalization have progressed rapidly, and I understand how unfounded resistance would have formed even if I don’t agree with any of it.

Newer conspiracy theories, the one more readily received by many members of my generation — including myself at times — differ in that they focus on the distrust of the known. The conspiracy theorists of today do not agree on the mechanism of how a certain thing happens, perhaps because technology has already evolved to a point where the "how" is irrelevant. Our generation’s conspiracies focus more, I think, on if the cloak and dagger is necessary at all.

Conspiracy theories regarding stolen elections, which seem to be trending in many countries around the world, are a good example. Nobody can quite agree on how the elections are being stolen, with claims ranging from a veritable army of undocumented foreigners voting multiple times to the counting machines being hacked. Yet, many are quick to anger at the belief that the election has been tampered in some way, because more than anything they believe the government they know would be willing to tamper with it in the first place.

That fundamental distrust in large institutions is at the heart of zoomer conspiracies.

This distrust stems from an unending list of real historical atrocities that many governments have tried to sweep under the rug over the years, some more successful than others.

In Korea alone, the 2016 political scandal revealed a crime ring involving then-president Park Geun-hye and a dozen different megacorporations. Former president Yoon Suk Yeol conspired to enact martial law in 2024. That is to say nothing of the atrocities that happened before my time, such as the April 3 Jeju Uprising and massacre, a horrific state-sanctioned violence that was glossed over in public education for decades.

That is to speak nothing of unspeakable abuse documented in the 3.5 million pages of the Epstein files. What of the miners in Congo or Bolivia or West Papua that suffer under horrific conditions? What of reports that come out from active war zones in Ukraine, Sudan, Myanmar, or the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza? How can any sane person continue to believe any government has the people’s interests at heart anymore?

Airplane chemtrails and flat earth sound so much more quaint in comparison. Logistics don’t matter anymore with the technology available now. The only important factor is that people in power have, on many occasions, demonstrated malice and intent while hiding behind smoke and mirrors — so will they this time?

Conveniently, the "rigged" camp has disappeared now that Spain won against Argentina, but I’m sure that’s not the last we’ll see of such claims. It’s easy to chuckle at jokes of "VARgentina," — a reference to the widely scorned Video Assisted Referee used in World Cup games — but I fear that increasingly we are headed towards a world where everyone lives inside their independent and irreconcilable realities.

It’s easy to say that the government should repair the damaged trust or that people should think critically. I cannot help but wonder how repair can happen when every progressive policy by the government is the act committed by "communist sympathizers" and every conservative policy is the result of "corporate sock-puppets" — and all the while, governments continue to drop bombs on children across the world.

Kim Young-moo is a Korea Times intern.