There’s a school of thought which suggests the rise of Bigfoot “sightings” in 1960s America was a reaction from largely white, rural, less educated white males to the growing urbanism, civil rights movement and their loss of power.

Men rallied behind a “wild, powerful and masculine” figure, an Ape-Man or beast of unknown origin that inspired fear. Bigfoot.

Now, 50 years later the paragraph above reads less about Bigfoot and more about another American phenomena, driven largely by lower income white males, and largely built on myth and hoax. Curiously, this one too has hair at the center of the narrative.