A Giant Alien Spaceship Crashed Into Earth (*actually)
Anyway, what am I going to make for dinner?
Apparently we are now at the stage of institutional trustfall where a sitting U.S. congressman can go on cable news and casually announce that a foreign nation is in possession of an alien spacecraft so massive that authorities had to construct a building the size of Hobby Lobby around it to hide it… and my first reaction is not awe, terror, or even burning curiosity.
It’s: Sure, Jan.
Missouri Congressman Eric Burlison says he’s heard reports—inside a “closed setting;” it’s all very cloak-and-dagger—of a UFO that crashed somewhere outside the U.S. that is simply too enormous to move. Ever. (I mean, we moved the London Bridge to Arizona, but okay.) We’re talking about a football-field-sized flying saucer, allegedly. Possibly in the mountains near Seoul, South Korea, if you ask Dr. Steven Greer, who appeared alongside the legislator and seemed far less burdened by classification anxiety.
Burlison explained that if he were ever to obtain concrete proof aliens had indeed visited our planet, he would not hesitate to make it public: “If I come under any hard evidence, whether it’s physical or video evidence that is absolutely definitive, whilst I’m going to do what I can to protect our national security and our nation’s interest, I will not hold back on telling the American people that we are alone or not alone in this universe,” the congressman promised.
Guess what, Eric? Whilst I appreciate your transparency pledge, we probably wouldn’t believe you. I mean, would we?
Ask yourself what sort of “absolutely definitive, concrete proof” the man could hold up that would make you go, “Well, damn. I guess I lost that bet.” A photo? CGI. A presidential announcement? Deepfake. A Martian artifact authenticated by six Nobel laureates and the guy who stripped Pluto of its planetary status? A Hollywood prop and some paid actors. We’ve blurred the line between virtual and reality so thoroughly that most of us can’t even confidently say whether or not we’re living in a simulation.
Behold, Exhibit A (which is entirely not-real):
If Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt were all over social media calling this AI, how could you be sure that was real? And when you can no longer believe your own eyes and ears, it’s like living in a riddle. (“A liar and a truth-teller walk into a bar...”) Forget about man’s search for meaning and welcome to the golden age of Who Even Knows Anymore.
Of course, none of this is helped by the fact that the people running the place lie to us as casually as they breathe. They told us for decades that Area 51 was a nutty conspiracy theory—and then they admitted that not only did it exist but it was routinely used as a classified test site. They repeatedly denied tracking “unusual orbital objects,” only for FOIA releases to reveal entire logs of satellite anomalies they claimed didn’t exist. They insisted the Roswell wreckage was just a “weather balloon,” and then decades later quietly conceded it was part of a classified program the public was never supposed to know about. They changed the term from UFO to UAP (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena), because the former was too stigmatized; too little-green-men; too unserious and unscientific. And this is serious, scientific stuff.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Also, there’s the little fact that some people have been waiting for this rollout for decades. Project Blue Beam ring a bell? This is textbook: Float the alien narrative. Drip-feed “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena.” Tease classified whispers. Let a former president chuckle about it on a podcast. Manufacture awe, destabilize certainty, weaponize wonder, then wheel in your Trojan horse while everyone is staring at the sky.
What’s inside it? Polymarket is split between “ignore the Epstein files” and “soft launch of the New World Order.”
Speculation is already swirling that 2026 could be the year of “full UFO disclosure,” as whistleblowers, new legislation, and mounting congressional pressure supposedly push the U.S. government toward unveiling authentic, bombshell-level evidence of interstellar visitation. Researchers claim the number of military and intelligence officials willing to testify publicly has reached a tipping point, especially following the release of The Age of Disclosure, a documentary featuring dozens of current and former officials alleging a decades-long truth embargo. (The teaser: “An explosive documentary that reveals an 80-year global cover-up of non-human intelligent life and a secret war among major nations to reverse-engineer advanced technology of non-human origin. Featuring testimony from 34 U.S. Government, military, and intelligence community insiders, the film exposes the profound stakes for the future of humanity.”) Its director says the feature has placed the issue squarely on President Trump’s agenda, reinforcing promises to declassify what the government knows about unexplained aerial phenomena—setting the stage, once again, for a potentially historic reveal.
Hahahaha I can already see the TikTok influencers holding up their OfficeMax binders.
If there really has been an 80-year secret war to reverse-engineer alien technology, would it even surprise anyone? I’d put that on my You Don’t Say List along with congress trading stocks, airlines losing luggage, and Big Tech harvesting my personal data. And if there were a literal cosmic mothership parked in the mountains of South Korea, do you think we’d be finding out about it via an Amazon Prime documentary that gets one-and-a-half stars on Rotten Tomatoes?
But just for fun, allow me to lead the class in a game of “let’s pretend it’s actually true.” A spaceship with more cabin space than a Disney cruise ship really did land on Earth. Tiny (or toppling!) tentacled creatures have been mingling among us without our knowledge. What, exactly, am I supposed to do with this information? If aliens are here, how exactly does this affect my life? Have they lowered interest rates? Fixed the pothole on my street? Improved airport security lines? Stabilized global politics? Made mangoes easier to eat?
Picture it: Tomorrow the government holds a press conference. They wheel out a high-res image of a colossal metallic object embedded in a rocky outcropping somewhere overseas. They confirm that, yes, it is an interplanetary vessel. It’s not ours. It’s not China’s. It’s not Russia’s. It predates known aerospace engineering. We are not alone. And (just go with me for a minute) we… somehow… trust this information to be true.
Okay. Now what? Do we get a tax credit? A commemorative coin? A federal holiday? Do the aliens join the UN? Maybe start a podcast? Do they have thoughts on inflation? Do we give them instant citizenship, or are they literal illegal aliens? (And are we allowed to call them that?) Are they liberal or conservative?
The reaction would split instantly, of course. Half the country would declare it a PSYOP. The other half would insist it proves everything from ancient pyramids to Pizzagate. The internet would explode with hundreds of subreddits before lunch. Etsy sellers would start peddling embroidered, alien-proof phone cases. Congress would hold hearings. Someone would yell about national security. Someone else would demand full disclosure. And by Monday we’d all be back to arguing about ICE.
That’s the part I can’t get past. We’re so saturated with spectacle that even the possibility of an extraterrestrial craft as big as a city block elicits a collective shrug. (And how fortunate that it face-planted in a remote Asian forest! Can you imagine if the thing had taken a nosedive into downtown Manhattan? #Blessed) Maybe it’s AI fatigue. Maybe it’s institutional distrust. Maybe it’s that we’ve been told for decades that “something big is coming,” and then the big thing never shows up. When you check your empty mailbox every day for seventy-seven consecutive months, eventually you accept the fact that the check is not, in fact, in the mail.
Or maybe—and here’s a heretical thought—maybe the presence of alien life, while cosmically interesting, is more or less irrelevant. Because unless they’re here to conquer, cure, or collaborate, my day-to-day existence does not change in any meaningful way. My bills do not vanish. My cat continues to pee in my sink. Dinner does not magically start cooking itself. And if they are here to conquer, cure, or collaborate… how is that all that different from the human playbook?
I suppose I’m meant to feel either outraged that such a discovery could be hidden from the public or electrified by the possibility of galactic guests. Instead I feel… neutral. Mildly curious. Slightly amused. Politely indifferent.
Maybe we’re not alone.
Maybe we never were.
Call me when the aliens come up with a better way to package flour.
A giant alien spaceship story could be more effective than the Guthrie kidnapping to cover up the Epstein Files.
I want a better way to package flour, sugar, and cereal! Must we allow the flour and sugar to leak? I’d like a discount for the bit that was lost. Why aren’t the inner cereal bags just ziplocks???