General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: UFOs exist and everyone needs to adjust to that fact [View all]anarch
(6,535 posts)Just for the sake of speculation, let's say that in the near future there should happen to be some visitation from some non-human intelligent entities similar enough to us for us to recognize them as "people"/fellow-civilized-beings...wherever they may be from or however they got here; doesn't matter--for instance it could be that they are some hitherto unknown human sub-species that evolved separately in some subterranean environment under Antarctica or something (or whatever, could be they are from some relatively nearby star and came here in a subluminal spacecraft that might look like that Oumamamowmow object or something [yes I know that's not how it's spelled]),
Whatever...this is just speculation...but at any rate let's assume they have some sort of highly maneuverable aircraft/vehicle that is what people have been seeing, and they land and introduce themselves to, I dunno, the mayor of Podunk, IA, in front of a local news crew, and then just split, leaving a message of peace and goodwill, or a warning about the climate, or whatever--it doesn't matter, let's just say they were here, seen by some small sub-set of the population, and caught on film, so that all the major media outlets pick it up (of course there's a delay while they verify sources, etc.) and this small town where it happened becomes world-famous.
My conjecture is this: given all of these circumstances (a "close encounter of the fourth kind" or what-have-you; a non-terrestrial-standard non-human craft is caught on film, etc.), regardless of the evidence, a majority of the population would dismiss the whole thing as a hoax; "fake news," just a CGI creation, etc.
I'd venture to guess this trend will increase as the technology evolves (e.g. this "deepfake" thing I keep reading about), so too will the difficulty increase with respect to being able to accept any recorded video evidence as "proof" of anything.
(note that this would also apply to recorded video evidence of other, more prosaic events...why I've always said, even if there is clearly documented video of Commandant Bonespurs cavorting with underage sex slaves in Moscow, people would still just say "nah, that's Fake News! That video's not real!" and his level of support wouldn't budge)