Even IF...

... I, as a totally honest observer just "happened" to have a camera/camcorder on me...and shot some "amazing" photos of a UFO (UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECT, not just "alien")...

How would I feel lately about posting it, proposing it, or circulating it?

Latley, we seem to have been fed MUCH dis-info. My question is why?

My speculation is that there is a reason to the high-tech dis info:

1. To see how astute the UFO community has become

2. To discredit anyone that comes forward with legitimate "honestly" shot film/photos.

Additionally,WHY would this occur?

This to me is a MUCH bigger question we, in the believer community need to start asking ourselves--as well as "why are there so many people willing to yell 'not real!!' on this this site lately?"

Serious dis-info upon dis-info seems to be happening exponentially--and I smell something fishy.

What is going on? How can we maintain an axiom or dichotomy for determining the "maybe-ness" of a video/picture? What are our requirements?

I really feel that an outside movement not only on ATS, but on the web in general is trying to start internal UFO community feuds in a classic "distraction technique"...but to what end? I have not a clue...but it seems to be working, am I wrong?

Break the community into factions, then they are easier to control, conquer and destroy.

We must hold strong.

.3


[edit on 15-8-2007 by MystikMushroom]

I'm a believer and i yell 'not real' because they aren't real.

Drones, Haiti UFOs etc... not real.

I am a fair skeptic. I believe in the existence of UFOs, but i'm not jumping on the bandwagon of any new videos or photos unless they are proven to be real. As i said in another thread today, it is wise to treat any new 'evidence' as guilty of a hoax until proven otherwise.

Why? Because there is more and more hoaxes, and if you simply say it's real without trying to prove so then you hardcore believers are just as bad as the hardcore skeptics.

Originally posted by fooffstarr
I'm a believer and i yell 'not real' because they aren't real.

Drones, Haiti UFOs etc... not real.

I am a fair skeptic. I believe in the existence of UFOs, but i'm not jumping on the bandwagon of any new videos or photos unless they are proven to be real. As i said in another thread today, it is wise to treat any new 'evidence' as guilty of a hoax until proven otherwise.

Why? Because there is more and more hoaxes, and if you simply say it's real without trying to prove so then you hardcore believers are just as bad as the hardcore skeptics.

Okay, fair enough!

But why are we being suddenly "flooded" with fake dis-info that causes us (the believer community) to argue amongst ourselves more so than in the past several years?

Why are we being "factionalized" into sub-groups of believers?

Where is all this "Serpo" and "Drone" crap comming from? Who REALLY are these people posting/presenting this stuff (the original people mind you)...

Something is afoot...I smell something in the air. The powers that know are trying to ascertain what we "really know" and at the same time divide us and make us quarrel with ourselves over fake crap in order to hide their secrets.

I don't think any of this recent stuff is real at all, but why are we all wasting such time on it? Why are we looking "that way" when we could be looking "this way"...

Things to chew on...

If we were to believe any hoo-haw that comes along then it shows other
people it is easy to deceive us. Not ATS though people come here, they
try to trick us and it's like we have 100,000 scientists figuring out what
the object is.
If we do not question what is presented to us then more people will come and bring more hoaxes!

[edit on 15-8-2007 by Equinox99]

It is true i guess that there has been some big hoaxes in recent times, but before the drone etc. there was the Australian UFO wave videos, Billy Meier etc. Can you see what I'm saying? For as long as there have been people photographing UFOs there have been people forging photographs of UFOs.

Maybe it seems like there is a lot of 'dis-info' around at the moment, but i simply think we are in one of the rises in the hoax cycle, and it will die off again in the not too distant future.

I don't think there is any sinister motive behind them apart from trying to make a buck or convince people.

I can understand the "rise and fall" argument...and I'd accept it...

However, It seems to me with the advent of GCI becoming more and more prevalent as a discrediting factor--we have to be extra vigilant.

Indeed, we have to take every photo, every video for a grain of salt...

But personally, I feel this environment (ATS) has become very hostile and eager to jump on the "HOAX" bandwagon.

Why?

Probably due in part to all the continual hoaxes that are presented.

It really does make it hard it would seem for an honest observer to post anything of true proof.

My question is--

"why is the atmosphere this way?"

Hm...why would anyone want people that really see anything to feel like they can't share it? Why post fake/hoax medium to perpetuate a fake-ish slug-fest ont he boards?

Perhaps to keep real people, with real footage afraid and in the dark.

As of yet, I have never seen a video or photo that convinced me of EBE's or their craft, yet I believe.

You have to think like the powers in control in order to understand the reasoning and logic behind their actions before you can understand their current actions.

Once you start thinking "like they do" (which, I admit is nearly impossible)...

A whole slew of possible dis-info campaigns upon dis-info emerge.



[edit on 15-8-2007 by MystikMushroom]

I would also like to add before reviewing responses:

Why spend so much valuable time creating such elaborate hoaxes if there was either no immediate financial gain/sick emotional satisfaction?

I fail to see that the drones, Serpo, Haiti, and countless other "hoaxes" have provided any of their originators either of the above.

With ATS's expert panel of skeptics, hoaxes are taken down in days. . . yet we have had a non-stop slew of them in recent months.

Neither of my aforementioned criteria would be satisfied after scrutiny by the ATS staff. . . So WHY? My question is WHY?

If you're not making money, or getting your jollies off from it...why do it?

Excellent thread. Lately everything seems to be the same old crap, recycled, and then spun by mis-informed hopefuls.

I see what you are getting at. As I read the OP, I realized I have had similar thoughts running through my mind. I have had a creeping suspicion over these professional level CGI hoaxes especially... They dont appear to be viral marketing... there are many possibilities as to where they come from, but they are mostly presented as real cases. I think its quite possible these things are part of a classic counter-intel exercise. If this trend continues and the imagery becomes even more striking, I think they will be used to delegitimize the real Ufo pics that will inevitably surface in the future (cameras everywhere and always improving picture quality). I can see it now... Throw in opposing views to those presented, confuse the issue, attack the material, trivialize, spin, be loud, and before you know it- most people are too confused to know whats what and lose interest. If they can pull that off against solid Ufo pics and videos...well.....

[edit on 15-8-2007 by Unplugged]

Maybe the situation with availability of quality cameras to capture these 'sightings' has improved in recent times but I would still be highly skeptical of high quality photographic evidence as it still indicates an element of forewarning as to the correct settings and, of course, looking in the right place. These pictures and videos will be faked (not all of them but a majority) simply because it's possible with modern equipment and home-based image enhancement capabities. So the grainy, out of focus, shaky, low quality images have the highest chance of being genuine by this logic.

It's like the question 'why do talented people create computer viruses?' - because they can and it's an adventure to do so and watch its progress.

Now I'm not a disbeliever in UFOs having seen one myself (just once and over 20 years ago) but, as I was the only witness to this and a camera would have been useless even if I'd had it set up in advance, I just kept it to myself for a very long time to avoid the ridicule that always comes with making such claims. For this reason most genuine sightings will never be heard about unless a large number of witnesses are involved but fabricated evidence always gets public exhibition (what else is it good for).

Originally posted by MystikMushroom
I can understand the "rise and fall" argument...and I'd accept it...

However, It seems to me with the advent of GCI becoming more and more prevalent as a discrediting factor--we have to be extra vigilant.

Are you serious? If you had to be extra vigilant to determine most are a hoax then I feel bad for you. Forget cgi for crying out loud. Just step back and use common sense. If what is happening on the screen makes no sense, it's not real (like traveling 1000 light years to buzz a third world beach, etc)


Not everything is a conspiracy set in motion by the secret cabal of top goverment agents intent on hiding UFOs from you, lol.

I think this is more a psychological thing than any other thing.

Many people believe in UFOs just because they want to believe. In the same way, some people believe that those who believe in UFOs are only gullible people that "swallow" everything, so they make the hoaxes just to have some laughs on those who would believe they hoaxes.

Why do people (usually while in school) have a favourite "victim" for their pranks and jokes? I see those who make the hoaxes as people who see the general UFO community as one of those prank victims, and so, using the human predator sense of attacking where we see a fault, they try to "fish" the most UFO believers into believing their hoaxes because the more people believe it the better, if some high-profile person appears on TV or on radio commenting about a hoax as if it was the real thing and the one who made the hoax knows about it then, for the hoaxer, it is a victory and it proves that he/she is smarter than the other people.

I think that is why there are more male hoaxers than female hoaxers (although I do not have any statistics to base this, just my faulty memory), it's a "boyish thing", just to make fun of other people.