Facebook UFO group moderators want to know why no one cares about UFOs.
Facebook UFO group moderators want to know why no one cares about UFOs
Paul Fanning was waiting for news on UFOs. He, along with the rest of the world interested in life outside of our planet, was anticipating a government drop of info.
"You've got this huge report coming, and I just have a feeling that it's going to change the conversation," Fanning, a 54-year-old who works in IT in Los Angeles and runs the Alien UFO Sightings Video Group on Facebook, told Mashable. "I don't know exactly how or in what context, but what I've been doing in advance of it being released is just really, really, really pulling back. I mean, we got really conservative on what we're posting just until this comes up, because I don't want to muddy the waters. I want to have a bit of a fresh slate."
Then, the news dropped.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a highly anticipated 9-page report on Friday afternoon that, plainly, doesn't say much. The report — "Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena" — says that there are many unidentified aerial phenomena, which the government has analyzed, and have decided that they don't know what they are.
Fanning said he suspected that the drop wouldn't be impressive. But that didn't stop it from disappointing him. When he shared a link of the report to the more than 66,000 members of his Facebook group, he added a note that read: "Well, the much hyped report is out. The same line of bs as when they closed project Blue Book: 'we don’t know, but they are not a threat.' Not a threat when a UFO can shut down a nuclear silo with impunity? 50 years and all the government can produce is 143 we don’t knows? For my part, I’m disappointed and not surprised. They know more. A lot more in my humble opinion. What say you?"
The group responded in kind: They were disappointed. The report was "a joke."
The administrators and moderators who keep UFO Facebook groups running are watching as the U.S. government slowly admits to what they've been studying for years: the existence of UFOs. And they do so on their own time, outside of the jobs, without pay and under intense stress.
It's a ton of work.
"The time that I've got right now is just to keep up with 65 posts a day, I would say is about the average of what I get," Fanning said. "I'm trying to keep up with those and some of them you have to watch the video and there might be some research. It's a ton of work. It's a ton of work."
Fanning doesn't want to bring on more moderators, either, because he says it's difficult to find people who are consistent, "normal" and have "the same philosophy on these things."
Michael Maddox, a 68-year-old in Washington State, was brought on as a moderator for the UFO Disclosure Group on Facebook, and he told Mashable he checks the group once or twice a day, every day. David Benjamin, a 31-year-old in Michigan who runs the UFOholic website and a Facebook group — Aliens, Alien Abductions, UFOs, and Alien related conspiracies/topics Group — found the constant moderating so challenging that he allows the group to flow a bit more organically now, by predominately stepping in when posts are flagged by Facebook.
But, for all of them, they say the work is worth it.
"The Facebook group is pretty much a reflection of our perception of reality," Maddox said. "But it's the reality that I find much more interesting."
From Maddox's perspective, there are a few kinds of members of his group: people who have been studying UFOs for years, and those who have a new, and more basic interest in them.
"Most people are very primary," Maddox said. "They want to know if they're even real. And the answer is of course."
Maddox's group saw an uptick in posts and people wanting to join after the most recent government drop. But Fanning hasn't seen a big uptick in years — it's been a steady increase for him. And Benjamin saw an increased interest in the group but hasn't seen anything massive. That's the surprising thing about running a thousand-member group on Facebook dedicated to discussing UFOs — the recent deluge of government information isn't necessarily shaking things up.
Fanning's kids, for instance, don't care about aliens. When he told them about the government drop, they shrugged it off.
"There's just such a flood of information out there that it's almost like sensory overload," Fanning said, drawing a potential connection between a 24-hour news cycle, social media, and informational exhaustion and some people's lack of interest in the otherworldly. "I think at some point, you just get numb to it."
The government has been slowly releasing UFO-related findings since April 2020, when the U.S. Department of Defense released three UFO videos taken by U.S. Navy pilots.
And for the folks who have been interested in this all along, they're not particularly happy with the timing. After decades of telling people UFOs are not real, the government releases documents at the tail end of a devastating pandemic.
"I think the perspective of people that are in the know as far as aliens and UFOs — in the know is really just people who have researched and done a lot of reading and watching content, maybe they have their own personal experience of seeing a UFO or whatever it may be — they have a sort of a healthy distrust for the government and media for various reasons," Benjamin said. "So I think in their eyes it's more of a nefarious timing, perhaps."
Poor timing or not, the newest report doesn't give anyone any real answers. It says the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs commonly known as UFOs) are one of five categories:
"Airborne Clutter," such as birds and balloons
"Natural Atmospheric Phenomena," including ice crystals
"USG or Industry Developmental Programs," like secret U.S. military planes
"Foreign Adversary Systems," like secret foreign government planes
"Other," which is a catchall for "idk?" and decidedly not a catchall for "aliens, probably."
More than a dozen of the UAP studied "Appear to Demonstrate Advanced Technology."
"Although most of the UAP described in our dataset probably remain unidentified due to limited data or challenges to collection processing or analysis, we may require additional scientific knowledge to successfully collect on, analyze and characterize some of them," reads the report. "We would group such objects in this category pending scientific advances that allowed us to better understand them."
The government says they don't know what some UAPs are, and they'll need more funding and higher technology to even begin discovering it.
But the bottom line is that there's something out there, flying around in the air in ways we don't fully understand. Is it a foreign government? Is it the U.S. government? The mystery continues, but it does feel like the latest dump of information, although answers nothing, is something.
Sooo many bright shinny conspiracies to chase and Area 51 is soooo 1955 👽🤷♀️
ReplyDeleteBut it is a nice private R&D facility under cover of the night and when our friend's satellites aren't overhead ;)
DeletePeople have been seeing strange things in the sky since there were people. Pilots in WWII refered to them as foo fighters. The UFO term comes from the late 1940s.
ReplyDeleteMy aliens friends think this is really funny and ridiculous! 🧑🚀👽🤣
ReplyDeleteMaybe its because it's obvious that they don't exist!!
ReplyDeleteUFO us only a cover for planned secret development of vehicles that they will encourage the world to believe it's from outer space instead of what they really are. The existence of UFO has always been a cover for equipment development in secrecy.
Bc we are too busy dealing with the problematic forms of life on this planet.
ReplyDeleteThe general public does not care about them, as if you do, you were made out to be crazy. That has stuck to this day. Unlike myself, that has seen something.
ReplyDeleteI have really seen a UFO. It was in 1971 in Uitenhage. It was just getting dark, when my neighbours' little girl called me to watch the big lights. And there, a distance out of the town on a koppie, was this round thing, with blazing lights. I just stared, wondering what the heck, when it suddenly lifted, and in seconds, it was gone. People laughed at me, but I know what I saw.
ReplyDeletePeople were not too concerned about bacteria either, when they were first discovered by an amateur non-scientist who made really good telescopes.
ReplyDeleteMuch of these phenomena can be observed in the infrared spectrum, where the human eye does not see but infrared cameras do.
Scared of being "probed"? :O :[]
ReplyDeletebecause most everyone already accepts it as fact - decades ago...
ReplyDeleteThey dont care about humans . Fact
ReplyDeleteTo my knowledge ET's aren't creating enough news to be relivant at this moment. If they do start being newsworthy, I'm sure they will get the attention they deserve.
ReplyDeleteWho knows. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Pointless arguing one way or another anyways, may as well argue if god/s exist or not while we all at it going into one massive loop.
ReplyDeleteBc earth is dying. Can't look at the sky when the ground is burning under our feet.
ReplyDeleteUFOs are real. If something is flying and you can’t tell what it is….there you go.
ReplyDeleteBut aliens visiting our planet? Nope. There is absolutely no evidence supporting it.
And until there is irrefutable proof, don’t bother claiming it.
No vision or imagination, too self-absorbed in their own little meaningless lives. :D
ReplyDeleteThe #kardashian got this covered o.O
DeleteThey censor people TOO MUCH there!!
ReplyDeleteExtraterrestrials are TELEPATHIC!!!
They don't CENSOR!!
They don't "CANCEL"!!
I think we as a generation have reached a point where we focus on what's trending for the day and move onto the next.
ReplyDeleteToo much brainwashing and pushing it to the ridiculous end of the scale...
ReplyDeleteDo.... they... not know?
ReplyDeleteI blame NDT!
ReplyDeleteBecause it seems that some sort of reptilians are already ruling the world. We need to fight those first. Then we can check whats up there.
ReplyDelete