The Boom in Fireworks Conspiracy Theories

Updated at 4:48 p.m. ET on June 24, 2020.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been able to watch several hours of a free nightly fireworks show from my living-room window. They pop off over the rooftops of my Brooklyn neighborhood, where the usually busy sonic landscape was reduced to sirens during the peak months of New York’s coronavirus outbreak, then to helicopters and cheering during the longest nights of the area’s Black Lives Matter protests. It’s been a noisy summer, but these recent explosions are by far the loudest and most remarked-upon sounds yet. Last week, the New York City news site Gothamist reported a nearly 4,000 percent increase in fireworks complaints from the same period last year. In Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Boston, residents have reported an unusual uptick in fireworks. In Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Hartford, Connecticut: fireworks. In Greenville, South Carolina, and Columbus, Ohio: fireworks!

I like the fireworks, and have mostly beenThat have already announced special law-enforcement units to deal with the nuisance has only fueled the conspiracy theories.