The Truth Is Out There

Here's something interesting (or so I say): the thesis that the Internet killed off UFO mania.

[I]n 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. What happened? Why did the saucers crash?

The Internet showed this particular emperor to be lacking in clothes. If UFOs and alien visitations were genuine, tangible, objective realities, the Internet would be an unstoppable force for detecting them. How long could the vast government conspiracy last, when intrepid UFO investigators could post their prized pictures on the Internet seconds after taking them? How could the Men in Black shut down every website devoted to scans of secret government UFO documents? How could marauding alien kidnappers remain hidden in a nation with millions of webcams?

Just as our technology for finding and understanding UFOs improved dramatically, the manifestations of UFOs dwindled away. Despite forty-plus years of alleged alien abductions, not one scrap of physical evidence supports the claim that mysterious visitors are conducting unholy experiments on hapless victims. The technology for sophisticated photograph analysis can be found in every PC in America, and yet, oddly, recent UFO pictures are rare. Cell phones and instant messaging could summon throngs of people to witness a paranormal event, and yet such paranormal events don't seem to happen very often these days. For an allegedly real phenomenon, UFOs sure do a good job of acting like the imaginary friend of the true believers. How strange, that they should disappear just as we develop the ability to see them clearly. Or perhaps it isn't so strange.

The same fate may await the "ghost"phenomenon. There is no shortage of "ghost" shows on TV--everytime I turn on the Travel Channel there is another show about haunted hotels. (Word of advice: never use TV shows like Unsolved Mysteries or The World's Most Haunted Restaurants as a dining guide. As we've found out, usually the only scary thing about them is the food.) So obviously, interest in ghosts must be very high. And yet, with camera phones, video recorders, instant and text messaging, etc., so widespread, we have yet to see an actual, compelling "ghost" captured live. Even those shows where people spend nights in purportedly haunted houses never actually reveal anything beyond a few creaks and some ominous shadows (and that woman on that one show who always has to have her language bleeped). Funny--as with UFOs, there were much "better" ghost pictures taken before portable imaging and photography were so widespread. Funny, that.