The Pentagon confirmed yesterday that videos shared back in 2017/18 of UFOs are real (as in, they are really unidentified flying objects, and the footage is legit). Only in the year 2020, where our lives already seem like a cliché sci-fi movie, could this news seem pretty tame. It barely made a ripple.
The Department of Defense shared a short, but sweet, statement on the “unidentified aerial phenomena,” saying that the “DOD is releasing the videos in order to clear up any misconceptions by the public on whether or not the footage that has been circulating was real, or whether or not there is more to the videos.” They confirm that the “aerial phenomena observed in the videos remain characterized as ‘unidentified.'”
I think we can all assume that these are mostly like just very advanced drones? If the US had any idea there was actual life on other planets, you know Trump would have bragged about trying to make them trade partners as soon as the file landed across his desk. But thinking that they are aliens or something a little bit more interesting than a drone at least temporarily makes the world seem a bit brighter. For a moment anyway.
Waking up and seeing #UFOs trending after everything that’s happened in 2020 already pic.twitter.com/ah2UcffO0D
— Jordan (@_JordanRH) April 28, 2020
Part of me feels like this is all just a distraction from the fact that our government is unable to provide for us in any real way, and therefore giving us this tiny bit of excitement is supposed to make us forget the situation we are in. Yet I’m just wondering if when aliens come they are going to die as soon as they are exposed to our germs/climate like War of the Worlds or Signs? I don’t think we are lucky enough to have intellectually altruistic aliens that want to teach us space travel and start a Federation of Planets with us. More’s the pity.
*i bet nothing can surprise us anymore…
pentagon: #UFOs are real
literally everyone: pic.twitter.com/5bjqwEXiCp
— – loves chris evans – (@jazzypech) April 27, 2020
This news really emphasizes the brunt of 2020 burnout. In any other timeline, this would be a fun internet discourse where one side would turn into alien truthers and the other side would come in and break down all of the logical reasons why this was not aliens. While there are still good memes circulating out there, there is more of an underbelly of total exhaustion. So many of us are experiencing this lockdown and the changes that COVID-19 has brought to the world as the end of something.
Even those of us who are used to the systematic failure of government are just being doubly brought down by the seemingly endless chaos that is 2020. So UFOs, you guys are really 2000 and late when it comes to grabbing our attention. Please return once the vaccine is delivered. Or bring the vaccine with you. Either one.
(via Nerdist, image: Columbia Pictures)
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