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Aliens Are, Like, Sooo Nineties!
Over at Tech Central Station, there’s a not-quite thought-provoking article about the “decline” of interest in aliens and UFO’s, ever since the internet got underway. I feel like somebody needs to ask this guy where the hell he has been?
After a paragraph recanting some highlights of UFO history, Doug Kern writes:
Yet in recent years, interest in the UFO phenomenon has withered. Oh, the websites are still up, the odd UFO picture is still taken, and the usual hardcore UFO advocates make the same tired arguments about the same tired cases, but the thrill is gone.
“Oh, the websites are still up“… so wait, you mean people still are actively interested in, talking about and investigating these phenomena? I mean, if you’re gonna write a persuasive essay, don’t shoot yourself in the foot by announcing you’re wrong.
But maybe he’s right about the thrill being gone though. Or maybe what he means is that many people have finally reached what’s being called a “saturation point” with High Weirdness lately. I’ll at least buy that as a thesis, even if I won’t buy the assertion that nobody’s interested in it at all anymore.
Kern claims that it was the rise of the internet which simultaneously made these things popular again and destroyed their credibility once and for all.
The Internet taught the public many tricks of the UFO trade. For years, hucksters and mental cases played upon the credulity of UFO investigators. Bad science, shabby investigation, and dubious tales from unlikely witnesses characterized far too many UFO cases. But the rise of the Internet taught the world to be more skeptical of unverified information — and careful skepticism is the bane of the UFO phenomenon. It took UFO experts over a decade to determine that the “Majestic-12″ documents of the eighties were a hoax, rather than actual government documents proving the reality of UFOs. Contrast that decade to the mere days in which the blogosphere disproved the Mary Mapes Memogate documents. Similarly, in the nineties, UFO enthusiasts were stunned when they learned that a leading investigator of the Roswell incident had fabricated much of his research, as well as his credentials. Today, a Google search and a few e-mails would expose such shenanigans in minutes. […]
The Internet processes all truth and falsehood in just this fashion. Wild rumors and dubious pieces of evidence are quick to circulate, but quickly debunked. The Internet gives liars and rumor mongers a colossal space in which to bamboozle dolts of every stripe — but it also provides a forum for wise men from all across the world to speak the truth. Over the long run, the truth tends to win. This fact is lost on critics of the blogosphere, who can only see the exaggerated claims and gossip. These critics often fail to notice that, on the ‘net, the truth follows closely behind the lies.
I kind of dig this notion that truth actually does prevail when it comes to the internet. It’s a rare person who makes that assertion nowadays. Most people are too happy to indulge in the fantasy that all information on the net is total garbage - which I just could never agree with, seeing as I’m one of the garbage-spewers.
Anyway, I do kind of question Kern’s closing argument though:
But is there any validity to the UFO phenomenon? Perhaps, but so what? The need for weird is hard-coded into the human condition. In every society, a few unlikely souls appear to make contact with an invisible world, communing with goblins or ghosts or aliens or gods or monsters.
“So what?” Come on! It’s crazy. Kern, it sounds like, has put down his child-like wonder - which is an essential tool for questing in these parts. Nobody says you have to believe any of it to enjoy it. You simply have to believe it’s possible. And as the dozens and dozens of personalized anecdotes and experiences we’ve collected here and on sister websites suggests, it’s not just “a few unlikely souls” who make contact with the invisible world. It’s almost everybody on some level or another. Maybe the problem with UFO and paranormal research these days is not the increased effectiveness of the internet for gathering and checking information - but the “so what?” attitudes of those who are doing it. We can either dismiss it all as fantasy or recognize (1) the value of the myth, and (2) the perhaps even greater value of believing that impossible things are possible, and that we can be a part of them.
Other sites which talk about this story:
- The Fortean Times They Are A-Changin’
- East of the Sun
- Ghost in my machine
- It’s over; the invaders won!
- In the end the truth wins
- Has the internet invalidated UFOlogy?
November 12th, 2005 at 8:33 pm
Interest has not waned, it is simply diffused. Whereas before we needed Art Bell and UFO magazine and Saucer Smear to annouce the news, now, a thiunsamd flowers are blooming. All the more reason to encourage colleges to start offering degrees in UFO-ology.
http://dw-links.blogspot.com/2005/11/u...elieve-first-ask-questions-later.html
November 12th, 2005 at 11:38 pm
What did Carl Jung say about space ships? Maybe it is time the collective unconscious starts manifesting some new images. I’d like to see more fairies and elves personally or even inexplicable surrealist imagery floating in the sky.
November 12th, 2005 at 11:57 pm
the collective unconcious is busy manifesting google right now. please call back later.
November 13th, 2005 at 2:52 am
UFO’S, are so NINETIES?
Suddenly, i feel old.
November 13th, 2005 at 4:43 am
I actually don’t totally disagree with Kern’s conclusion. I mean, I totally hear your point about the value of myth, and of believing that impossible things are possible. I’m a big skeptic of everything, but I still like to think about things like ghosts, God, the afterlife, magic, “souls”, and other metaphysical phenomena… that’s why I like to read this site. But aliens? I’ve always felt a little “so what?” about aliens. Maybe alien stories seem more easily debunked than other stories of contact with the “invisible world”, or maybe I just find them less interesting… but where’s the real value in believing that aliens come to earth to collect sperm samples?
November 13th, 2005 at 2:25 pm
Reply to Rachel:
Consider the possibility that the lines you’ve drawn are arbitrary. You seem to believe that a clear divide exists between things like ghosts and UFOs. Why is that? To me, the phenomenon is given a misnomer by being termed “alien” or “extraterrestrial,” it seems to be just another manifestation of the more “interesting” phenomena you mention.
Of course, I may be wrong. But, to answer your question, I don’t think any value exists in believing that aliens have come to collect sperm samples–as that would merely be an unproven assumption. Though, to look at the various UFO events have taken place over the years, and will continue to take place, and to recognize the fact that–in each one of them–something incredibly important is going on . . . well, I see quite a bit of value in that.
November 13th, 2005 at 2:31 pm
there is no value in believing anything. we are working towards knowledge by examining the evidence of alien encounters. belief takes over when the facts run out. there are some entirely disengenuous types out there who will spin tales for fun and profit. this behaviour confuses the genuine inquirer who is after facts. one can become disenchanted and frustrated by the cartoonish presentation that the “roswell” industry has taken on. this doesn`t discount the reports of bizzare experiences reported by hundreds of thousands of people who are reporting encounters or events such as the phoenix lights which defy explaination to this day.
it depends how you approach the whole alien phenominon. if it`s merely for entertainment then it could easily be so “nineties”, but if it`s knowledge one is after, then inquiry continues.
November 14th, 2005 at 2:27 pm
There are two seperate UFO things, I think. There is the possiblity of contact with something out there and phenomena that are fairly solid and subjective, like lights and objects. And then there is the Greys and abductions and all that.
I noticed, back in the ’90s, two changes in ideas on UFOs from the ’70s. One, there was a much sharper divide between the beleivers and the scoffers and far fewer real skeptics - people who knew they didn’t know even if they see the possiblity as too low to bother exploring. The other is that the aliens became far more specific in appearance. The first UFO thing was in decline and the second ascendant. There are lots of people now who know for sure there are UFOs (and know exactly what they are all about) and lots who know for sure there aren’t, and it doesn’t surprise me that one result could be fewer people investigating.
It seems to me that there is a thing that happens to human experience that is experienced according to the mythology of the person experiencing it. I don’t know what the thing is, I suspect that it is a seizure-type event with little or no connection to outside reality. There is a kind of reality tag that people apply to what goes through their heads, which usualy gets applied to things like normal sensory perceptions and usualy not to emotions and fantasies and stories. In a religious experience, that tag gets applied to emotions or ideas that it usualy doesn’t. And it definitely gets applied to the experience we are talking about here, perhaps even more than to normal expereiences. Or maybe there actualy are actual physical entities involved. I’m a Pragmatist, so I don’t care much about the nature of the aliens themselves (the recipies for life are the same ither way) but what happens to the people involved is far more relevant.
Anyway, whatever it is, seizure-related altered state or encounter with something outside normal experience, is an elf or an alien or something else depending on your culture.
This is one of many practical implications of having a crappy mythic structure: you run a very real risk of being probed by ugly gray aliens when you could have been forced to enjoy a supernaturaly beautiful being to the point of exaustion and/or insanity. Whether there actualy are other physical entities involved or not, the experience is, by all accounts, at least as real as a trip to Las Vegas, and has long term effects on the person involved.
November 14th, 2005 at 8:39 pm
raymond fowler wrote a book called the andreasson legacy, about a family who experienced ongoing alien abduction experiences. in the book he quotes a comparitive analysis study by dr. thomas bullard of several hundred abduction cases that shared at least two of eight distinct parts of the abduction experience.
the parts are as follows;
1.capture.
2.examination.
3.conversation with aliens.
4.tour of craft.
5.otherworldly journey.
6.religious experience. (theophany.)
7.return to earth
8.aftereffects and unusual phenomina.
what i have seen recently is an emerging environmental message from aliens which, to me, is suspicious of an entirely human concern imprinted onto the abduction tale. there are some contradictions in logic that suggest that some of the alien abduction experience is a fabrication, whether conscious, from the reporter`s standpoint.
the sheer volume of reports suggests a background of validity to the experience with the opportunity for the all too human desire to manipulate added.the effect being that it is hard to sort the data from the noise, which maybe why researchers are losing interest.