Ted Cruz–Zodiac meme

The Ted Cruz–Zodiac meme is a mock-conspiracy theory popularized on the Internet by opponents of Ted Cruz's candidacy for President in 2015–16. The internet meme facetiously suggested that United States Senator and former 2016 presidential candidate Ted Cruz was the Zodiac Killer, an unidentified Californian serial killer of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Cruz, born 1970, could not have committed these murders, which began before his birth. Circulators of the meme do not genuinely believe that he was the Zodiac Killer, citing the absurdity of its premise; NPR wrote that the meme captured "a feeling they have about Cruz: they think he's creepy. And they want to point that out, as clearly as they can."

To be clear: the Zodiac Killer line is a joke. But it's a prolific joke, and one you can find printed on bumper stickers and a variety of black metal tees across the country. For Cruz, the Baptist senator for Texas and right-wing Republican presidential candidate, it's an unexpected foray into popular culture.

A January 2016 investigation by Miles Klee of The Daily Dot found the first use of the meme to be by a Twitter user in March 2013, as Cruz was speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference and vowing to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The meme was not repeated until November 2014, by another Twitter user writing about Cruz's proposal against net neutrality.

It continued in obscurity up to February 2016, when another Twitter user used Photoshop to edit a picture of a Republican debate in order to include "Is Ted Cruz the Zodiac Killer?" in the interactive ticker at the bottom. That month, "is ted cruz the zodiac killer" was the second highest suggestion in Google's autocomplete for "is ted", but by April it was not in the autocomplete at all.News.com.au writer Matthew Dunn suggested that Google was censoring the search term, showing evidence that it got 89% of total searches when compared to other terms in the autocomplete.

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