I bring this up because it seems to once again be gaining traction in the zeitgeist: I cannot comprehend why UFO hunters put so much time and effort into trying to force governments to “reveal the truth about extraterrestrial contact”, but I also cannot fathom how they think aliens even have a chance of successfully contacting us in-person in the first place.

a) Why does anyone believe extraterrestrials would be able to track us down at all? Space is BIG.
b) If aliens knew we existed in the first place, please explain the math of how they’d get here. Even taking Star Trek logic into account and considering warp drive as a possibility, when considering relativity, Newton’s third law and the mathematics of achieving the right conditions of either for deep space travel, warp drive still seems implausible.
c) In the mathematically improbable situation where intelligent life did manage to get here, why would they be tiptoeing around in the background for seemingly 80 or so years when they are clearly technologically superior to us and nothing humanity has available to itself could remotely stop them? It seems silly to imagine these incredible lifeforms getting here and then having an “oops we crash landed” event.
d) Lastly, governments successfully covering up such an event(s) for decades is a fairy tale. Governments playing around with flight and stealth technology for the last 100 years? Yeah that seems likely.

Do I think intelligent life exists? Absolutely. Is there a chance those beings have contacted or reached us? 99.9999999% no. Is it fun to speculate about the possibilities and portray those possibilities in stories? Of course. Should people be spending time and money forming organizations to “force the government to tell the truth”, thereby wasting everyone else’s time and resources and ultimately being drains on society? Absolutely not. I don’t get it.

  • barnyard_noise
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    221 year ago

    I cannot understand the people who do those annoying social media “pranks” that involve making a mess for some poor retail person/janitor/cashier to clean up. Especially because the most direct explanation is that the videos gain traction—to which I then ask, who are the people that watch those videos and go “heck yeah I love this”??

    • sailsperson
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      81 year ago

      People who dislike these videos and comment on them to say that the perpetrators are morons also contribute to the tractiosn it gains because algorithms love engagement, corporatations love engament, so they’ll happily show the videos to more people in the vicious cycle of engagement.

      • niktemadur
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        41 year ago

        This is why I hate the constant bombardment of trump/musk/reddit/etc posts. Or toxic-flavors-of-the-month like Andrew Tate.

        People feeding the noise, and I bet you most of them are convinced that “It’s okay if I do it, because I’m being ironic, I’m above it all”.
        No they’re not, they fixate on the most negative shit that floats across their field of perception. And there are always enough of these “I’m special, I get a pass” people to make the noise reach maximum level all the goddamned time.

        • sailsperson
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          31 year ago

          Sometimes you also think that you’re the one who’s got it all figured and can provide something so insightful, so powerful, so eye-opening that you’re going to change someone’s life, and consequently, the world, for the better - we like to feel special and big, but we’re not.

    • Eggyhead
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      51 year ago

      A few years back there was a social media moron who came to Japan and pulled some stupid & offensive shit. I was actually living & working there at the time and, while I’m not a violent guy, I desperately wanted someone to go knock his teeth in. He had zero comprehension the shit he did for his pos channel meant more xenophobic discussions toward those of us who had/wanted nothing to do with him.

      • GanondorfOP
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        21 year ago

        If this is the same person I’m thinking of, eventually a bystander did get angry enough to have a physical altercation with them at one point. They either overheard him or recognized him and shoved him, then told him off.