With the recent appearance of the monolith, many think it may be something from a higher power, something we can’t understand. But at the end of the day, it easily could have been another person. With the reappearance happening in other areas, it has lead to the belief that this is all just a promotion for something. Whether it be a product, an art installation, or a tv series, the monolith is most definitely not supernatural.

What leads to this belief is the rising popularity of using ARGs as recent marketing methods. ARG stands for Alternate Reality Game, which is where a company (or an individual, in the first large cases) places a lot of mysteries out there, whether on the internet or out physically, for the sake of marketing. It usually ends up being one big advertisement to pull you into whatever product they’re putting out there.

According to the story on this by the New York Times, one Ross Bernards saw the dismantling of the monolith, surely confirming that its not extraterrestrial in any way. “As they walked off with the pieces, one of them said ‘Leave no trace.’” is what Bernard claims he heard. And it makes sense; this confirms that the culprit was not aliens, but humans, and with a purpose. “They just came in there to execute and they were like, ‘This is our mission.’” said Bernard, it clearly paints a picture where they are doing this for some big plan.

Based on recent events, there is also another lead to believe that the monolith very well might be an ARG based on a new account made on Tik-Tok called “project_blackout”. This very well could be a standalone thing. It’s more likely to be a company, as this would be hard to orchestrate on a small scale. The account claimed that on the first of January, something will happen. What that was, only time will tell. It’s not uncommon for marketing to take place on the app. Whether people know it or not, stuff like this happens on social media more often than not.