News @lemmy.world stopthatgirl7 @kbin.social 1 yr. ago

The true story of the fake unboxed aliens is wilder than actual aliens

www.vox.com The true story of the fake unboxed aliens is wilder than actual aliens

All the greed, fraud, centuries of racism, and deteriorated llama skulls behind Mexico’s unboxed aliens.

Forteana @feddit.uk ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝 @feddit.uk 1 yr. ago

www.vox.com /culture/23875671/aliens-mexican-congress-real-or-hoax-peru-nazca-mummies-jaime-maussan-fraud-scam

21 comments

I remember a couple days ago scrolling on the ufos and conspiracy places on some old site and seeing them all accuse anyone who thought this was sketchy as “disinfo agents” trying to distract them and discredit the obviously huge discovery for mankind this was.

It was amusing and sad.
- It's amazing how none of the conspiracy morons care about real shit like the Panama papers etc.
  
  They would rather believe in a made up, shadowy group of super wealthy and connected people that rule the world, as opposed to the very public group of super wealthy and connected people that rule the world.
  
  So, I have a private theory that there is a deliberate effort by government and industry to spread obviously outlandish conspiracy theories, to discredit people who are threatening government and industry's operations by talking about the actual conspiracies that happen.
  
  US sprays biological weapons from the air onto Americans -> people find out and get upset -> weird chemtrails conspiracy theories -> helps discredit people trying to report the initial kernel of truth
  
  Lots of rich people are sex criminals -> people find out and start listing specific names -> QAnon -> helps discredit people talking about pedophilia by the powerful
  
  I think a related thing happens in protest organizations, with part of the affected industry's multi-million-dollar effort to combat their opposition, e.g.:
  
  Factory farming exists -> people find out how bad it is and get upset -> ag industry infiltrates PETA with people who say outlandish things -> people think PETA is crazy -> helps discredit opponents of factory farming
  
  Climate crisis -> people do protests to try to stop it -> energy industry infiltrates protest organizations and advocates for protest methods that are guaranteed to piss people off -> helps discredit climate protests
  
  Ironically enough, I have precisely 0 shred of evidence or indication that any of this is happening. But, it makes so much sense that I believe it to be true.
  
  Permanently Deleted
  
  Conspiracists cling to complicated conspiracies because it provides them a clear story about how the world runs.
  
  These people are intellectually incapable of understanding that the world is mostly random.
  
  They believe in conspiracies not because they truly believe the earth is flat or whatever, they might, but they are attracted to fringe beliefs for the desire for community. Or to make sense of the randomness of the world. For an uncomplicated answer for complicated problems. It's a lot more complicated that people being kinda dumb.
- I feel the problem with that mindset is that it implies that the government would have a direct benefit to denying the existence of aliens. When the reality is that defense spending would nearly double if proven true.
  
  NASA is kind of in the same boat, once alien life is found, suddenly people are going to want research and collect data on the new life, which means their budget goes up too.
  
  So there is a direct intensive to finding aliens from two places of government.
  
  Then there is the personal benefits, you get to be the first human in history to discover aliens.
  
  As an academic, your face will be in every history book titled "First contact." You will be on every talk show across the US and abroad as it would be translated into multiple languages. You'd be famous and wealthy whether you wanted it or not.
  
  So when I look at the argument that the government has a direct intensive to hide the truth, I don't see a fair argument. Just people that assume the government has those intensives to hide from the public, when the reality is the opposite.
  
  Agree with you. Finding actual extraterrestrial life would be a sure fire way to get a big budget increase. The issue here is that people who are intellectually inclined like this don’t think like this. It’s a couple steps too far ahead.
- I saw a UFO community post on Lemmy yesterday and they all agreed those were fake.
After the last 7 years, I saw "wild" in the headline and was expecting something spicy. No such luck.

TL;DR they're fake
- I don't know, seemed pretty wild to me. Someone legit crowdfunded a fake alien mummy and raised over $40K. Then there's the sad fact that the mummies are actually intentionally badly mangled human mummies (most likely criminally looted from culturally significant archeological sites), and that their creator has been involved in a long list of prior hoaxes and fake "discoveries". These guys are so brazen at least one group of UFO enthusiasts has actually banned them because they got tired of dealing with all their blatantly obvious hoax reports.
  
  Yeah but all of that is a lot less wild than actual aliens. If Jenna Ellis or Hugo Chavez was involved in some way, then I'd say the headline was getting closer to a justified exaggeration, but this is just con men.
- But the word “fake” is also in the title…
What’s even more amazing is that idiots believed this dumb shit.
People are gullible as shit

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