For the accompanying Trash Skunk Podcast episode to this article, listen here.
You're asleep in a mobile home park somewhere north of Tucson, Arizona. You begin to stir, roused by a dull humming sensation. As you open your eyes, you realize your whole trailer is shaking violently. A sun-bright light blasts through your windows, and your front door bursts open as if it were on hydraulics. A tall, sinewy figure with an oblong head steps inside. He raises an object in his hand, and you see the silhouette of a jiggling silicone dildo bobbing in the blinding light. A moment later you're on a spaceship, bent over a glowing table and howling like a lost coyote, the recipient of an intergalactic prostate exam.
And then it's over. You wake up in bed, door locked, pants on backwards, feeling confused. It's morning now, and there's no trace of your visitor. Was it all just a nightmare?
Welcome to the Trash Skunk Guide to Aliens, Part One.
All these channels and still nothing on.
Aliens - Foundations and Fundamentals
Everyone is fascinated by aliens. Republicans, for example, are perennially interested in "illegal aliens", a term they invented for uninvited visitors from Latin America. But this article isn't about those people. This article is about extraterrestrials, presumably the aliens you came here to read about.
No matter who you speak to, chances are they're going to have an opinion about the existence of life on other worlds. It's just one of those topics that's too interesting to escape our collective attention, so whether you're the type to say "they're out there somewhere" or you claim to have been literally sodomized by E.T., you've probably taken a position on the matter.
According to a poll conducted by The Economist and YouGov, 35% of American adults believe aliens have visited Earth at some point in the past. To put this number in perspective, Donald Trump was elected by just 27% of voting-aged adults in 2016. These statistics come from the exact same population pool - American adults - which means the idea of aliens visiting Earth has more support than the man we elected to be our leader. And if you know anything about Donald Trump, it's easy to understand why.
Before we journey further down the road of what people believe, I think it might be helpful to categorize what we're talking about. "Believing in aliens" is a broad term, and it encompasses several different possibilities that should not be confused with one another.
We can break down attitudes towards extraterrestrial life into the following categories:
Aliens do not exist
Aliens are unlikely to exist
Aliens might exist, but we have no evidence of them
Aliens are likely to exist, and we might even have some evidence
Aliens do exist, but they haven't been to Earth
Aliens do exist, and they visited earth in the past
Aliens exist and are currently visiting Earth, but we haven't made official contact
Aliens are visiting Earth, we've made official contact, and it's a government coverup
Aliens exist and one of them stuck something up my ass
Positions 1-4 are the most scientifically legitimate, with positions 5-9 veering increasingly into the world of conspiracy and, frankly, silliness. Some people would say position 5 belongs in the scientifically acceptable camp, but I would say its hard assertion "Aliens do exist..." is a little too certain, given the evidence available to us at the moment. That could change, of course, but for now this kind of surety seems premature. "Aliens do not exist", while being equally as assertive, holds more water because the burden of proof falls to the positive claim (that they do exist), not the negative.
As I thought over how to present this article, I decided that "science vs. pop culture" is the best way to describe the various outlooks on extraterrestrials. These categories represent two distinct approaches to the idea of alien life. Accordingly, I've decided to separate "A Trash Skunk Guide to Aliens" into two separate articles . The first will concern itself with aliens in popular culture, and the second with the scientific opinion on extraterrestrial life.
So let's talk about the entertaining stuff first: aliens in popular culture.
The Truth Is Out There
I can't speak for Europe, but in the United States it's possible to define every decade of the last 70 years by the ludicrous things we were afraid of. Simply put, the timeline of American fear looks something like this:
1950s: Communism
1960s: Hippies
1970s: Nuclear War
1980s: Satanists
1990s: Aliens
2000s: Muslims
2010s: Barack Obama
2020s: Social Media / Socialism / Transgendered Individuals (it's still early)
You'll notice I singled out the 1990s as being the "Era of Aliens" in America, because I think that's where the whole craze really started. From 1991 to 2001 we enjoyed a sort of post-Cold War, pre-9/11 Pax Americana that, quite frankly, led us into some strange hobbies. In those boring, peaceful years, we began looking for new things to be afraid of, since nuclear war was off the menu and nobody had yet plowed a jet into a skyscraper. This ennui of fear led us to take interest in things like ghosts, Nessie, Bigfoot, and aliens. It's difficult to overstate just how much of our cultural attention was devoted to these topics during the 90s.
But while mysterious things like cryptozoology and the Bermuda Triangle were items of societal interest, it was aliens that really came out on top. The X-Files, Men In Black, Alien Autopsy, Roswell, Independence Day, and Contact are evidence of the decade's obsession with visitors from outer space. And coinciding with the popularity of this interest was the rise of the internet and home computer.
For the first time in history, people were able to engage with "alternative information" outside the realm of a funky bookstore or independent magazine. This led to the growth of online communities formed around aliens, and as our collective interest in extraterrestrials evolved, a pop culture narrative of "alien history" developed. It looks something like this.
Ancient Aliens
In some versions of the pop culture alien narrative, extraterrestrials seeded Earth with life, making us aliens ourselves. But I find this idea boring, because it is essentially meaningless at the end of the day. I'm already on board with the idea that a sea-creature pulled itself onto land billions of years ago and eventually turned into my dad. Learning that an alien put it there to begin with wouldn't change much for me. Let's move on.
A more popular version of early alien history theorizes that ancient extraterrestrials observed humans building proto-civilizations, and decided to visit Earth and help us out. Adherents of this theory say that one of our heavenly visitors' earliest projects was teaching mankind how to build pyramids, because apparently they believe we could never have figured that one out on our own. Frankly, I think this is insulting to both Egyptians and humanity. A pyramid is a glorified pile of rocks - we're more than capable.
Stupid as it sounds, this theory gained popularity in the 2010s, due in large part to the popular History Channel pseudo-science program Ancient Aliens, in which the concept is explained over ten seasons of absolute drivel by a stoned dork named Giorgio A. Tsoukalos.
Despite Tsoukalos's incredible hairstyle and passion for the ancient aliens theory, he did not actually invent the idea of ancient aliens himself. As with so many things in history, it was first conceptualized by a German weirdo, whom I suspect, like many Germans, was probably also a nudist. This man's name was Erich von Däniken.
Your expert panel: Trash TV, a Suspected Nudist, and a Whatever This Guy Is Trying to Be
In 1968 von Daniken published Chariots of the Gods, a book that put forth the hypothesis that extraterrestrials were responsible not only for helping us build the pyramids, but also the Nazca Lines, Stonehenge, Easter Island Heads, and anything else that seems, you know, heavy and hard to do without machines. Chariots of the Gods gained a cult following in the decades that followed, but von Daniken's work was never considered scientifically serious. Probably because it isn't.
The problem with ancient aliens theory is that it's easy to debunk. Most of its claims simply arise from not giving humanity enough credit for our achievements. Sure, it sounds hard to build a pyramid. Stones are heavy, Egypt is hot, and who the hell wants to go through all that work just to bury a dead guy wrapped in toilet paper?
This is all well and good until we understand that Egyptians were incredibly bored, and had nothing better to do than stack rocks in interesting shapes for their pharaoh. In fact, a common misconception is that the pyramids were built by anguished slaves who hated their lives, but that's not true either. They were probably just built by bored farmers with nothing better to do during the yearly Nile Flood Season.
Ancient Alien theory sometimes extends itself into relative modernity. Proponents point to several renaissance paintings in which strange UFO-like objects are depicted by the artists, who "should have no knowledge of spacecraft". Therefore, the logic goes, these artists must have seen UFOs themselves, or have some knowledge of aliens that was lost over the centuries.
My problem with this one is that Renaissance paintings are often filled with weird imagery, but people only focus on the UFO-shaped bits. Why, for example, doesn't anyone want to talk about why the woman on the bottom left of this painting has wings? Surely a humanoid with bird wings is as strange as light coming out of the sky or a disc-shaped object amongst the clouds?
In reality the whole thing is easily explained. Renaissance art is typically religious in theme, so of course it's going to be filled with radiant objects in the sky, beams of light coming down on people, and humanoids with wings or other supernatural features. This should be obvious - the winged woman is a fucking angel, and the sky-thing is just god shooting down his love or whatever all over that girl's face. If you look closely you can even see a dove - the symbol of Christ - in the beam of light near the woman's head.
I hate ancient alien theory. It's unconvincing and dumb. Thankfully, things do get more interesting.
The Birth of Modern Aliens - Roswell
Extra, extra! Idiots find balloon!
While some alien enthusiasts spend their time pondering neolithic extraterrestrials, others have more modern tastes. The biggest thing in alien culture has and always will be "The Roswell Incident", which is sad because it's actually pretty stupid. Whatever your feelings on it, Roswell is the starting point for the modern UFO/alien pop culture narrative. The story is so ubiquitous that you're probably already familiar with it, so I'll be brief.
In 1947 a US military balloon monitoring the atmosphere for nuclear testing crashed on a farmer's land outside Roswell, New Mexico. Locals picked through the wreckage and, having heard reports of "flying discs" recently, wondered if this could be the remains of one, since it obviously wasn't a plane. When the US military came to recover their balloon, they foolishly latched onto this notion and told a reporter they'd captured the remains of a flying disc, only to clarify the next day that it was just downed weather balloon (which was a white lie to disguise the balloon's true purpose. Either way, it was just a balloon.)
Even though the military retracted their flying disc statement, the cat was out of the bag - the press published an article saying the government had captured a flying saucer from outer space. This little slip-up led to decades of people believing humanity came into possession of an alien spacecraft that day, although that is almost certainly not the case.
Anyone who has served in the military knows the odds of an official saying something stupid to the press rank far above the odds of aliens crash-landing a ship in New Mexico. Military personnel also know that the government can be messy, disorganized, and have a hard time keeping even small secrets. Yet the Roswell incident continues to inspire believers today, and is viewed as the starting point for modern UFO phenomena. Which brings us to our next point.
UFOs vs Aliens
I think it's worth mentioning that while UFOs are very real, this doesn't necessarily mean they are extraterrestrial spacecraft operated by aliens. The term "UFO" just means "unidentified flying object", which could be anything from a weather balloon to an errant frisbee golf disc. If it's an object in the sky you can't identify, it's a UFO. It should be mentioned that under scrutiny most UFO sightings have perfectly rational explanations - military aircraft, ball lightning, camera lens phenomena, etc.
But there are some UFO sightings that are so goddamned bizarre and unexplainable that people feel compelled to throw up their hands and say "it must be aliens". Now let's think about this for a minute. If you see an unidentified object in the sky performing amazing aerial maneuvers, it could be an alien. Technically. But if we're being intellectually honest with ourselves, we need to admit that you have no proof of that.
This jump from "I saw something weird" to a near-supernatural conclusion is an example of the sort of magical thinking that has plagued humanity throughout most of our history. "If I can't explain it, it must be god / magic / ghosts / demons / angels / witches / aliens". This is what we do when we give up trying to figure things out scientifically - we resort to magic or the paranormal. It's lazy and stupid, which explains why it's so popular in America.
Look, I'm not going to sit here and deny there aren't some insane UFO videos. There are - and they could depict alien spacecraft, for all we know. It's certainly more fun to think of it that way. But in my opinion, there is probably a more mundane solution for all of these that we just aren't clever enough to figure out.
Let's watch a few together.
The Phoenix Lights
One clear night in 1997, a V-shaped formation of lights cruised over Phoenix, and was witnessed by thousands of people. To this day nobody really knows what the hell that was all about. It's undeniably bizarre, and the sheer amount of witnesses to the event is a boost to its credibility among UFO enthusiasts.
Recently Leaked US Military Footage
The US Department of Defense recently admitted several leaked videos depicting UFOS taken by Navy and Air Force pilots are "real".
Real what, though?
These videos are undeniably interesting, but we should be careful about how we read the Pentagon's statement on this. They didn't say "they're real alien spacecraft", or "they're real evidence we're being visited by aliens". Nothing of the sort. The Pentagon simply admitted that the videos exist and were indeed filmed by the military. They then went on to say that they have a team assigned to investigating UFOs. That's it.
This doesn't necessarily mean they're investigating these UFOs, or even that these were UFOs at all. As the astronaut at the end of the video said, these could easily be experimental military projects the Pentagon conducted themselves, experiments they now must explain away because the videos got leaked. I freely admit this scenario is unlikely - but it's still way more likely than chalking it all up to aliens. At least we know the military exists, and that it carries out tests with secret technology, and that when military secrets leak they have a habit of trying to spin it. The point is there's a long list of suspects we can get through before we arrive at the enormous claim that these are alien spacecraft.
"But the way the object moved violated all known laws of physics! What else could it be?!"
What is more likely: that reality itself has come undone and the long-standing, rock-solid laws of physics have been destroyed.... or that you didn't see what you think you saw? Or that the instrument through which you observed the phenomenon produced faulty data, or otherwise failed to perform? I'm not a huge gambler, but here's a tip: never bet against reality.
Look, dear reader, I don't want to be the homeless man at the daycare here. These UFOs could be aliens. But we don't have evidence of that. And sophisticated, science-minded folks like you and I don't jump to conclusions without evidence, do we? As far as we know, these objects could be anything, and with earthly explanations still on the table, I'd wager they are likely of terrestrial origin.
A Technical Note
One big problem I have with UFOs is that they suffer from the same problem cryptozoology does: every goddamn image of these reality-shattering events happens to be taken on the world's worst camera. Why? For the love of god, can we please get some high-quality footage of a UFO, Sasquatch, El Chupacabra, or any of these other things whose existence would fundamentally change how we see the world? People film bum fights on the subway in 4K every night and somehow we still can't get a decent shot of an alien spacecraft?
No, apparently. All video and photographic evidence of these events must be extremely low-res, shaky, and brief. It's frustrating, but there's a good reason for this.
In the case of cryptozoology, the images look awful because those ludicrous fantasy animals don't exist, and the purported photographs and videos are hoaxes. The poor quality imagery is intentional.
In the case of UFOs, I believe many of the videos are real, but the only reason these objects are "unidentified" is because we can't properly see what we're looking at. If we could, they might not be such a mystery to us. Instead we get fuzzy grey balls darting about in black and white, or mysterious dots of light filmed from 10 miles away on a Super-8 home video camera. Not exactly helpful.
I know we love our UFOs, but it's a huge presumptive leap from "I don't know what that is" to "oh yes I do, it's an alien tooling around in his interstellar Porsche". Aliens are a fun way to explain the UFO phenomenon away (and it could be true), but until we know more I'm not willing to cast my lot with the believers on this one. For now, the UFO business remains firmly in the "pop culture" camp and not the "hard science" camp. But I'll be happy to take that back the minute we can prove these objects are being flown by aliens.
Now let's talk about something even sillier.
Alien Species
Over the decades of purported alien sightings, people have come up with a general agreement about the "races" of extraterrestrials that are said to exist. The more-or-less accepted list of alleged species looks like this:
Little green men. These are actually just an old Hollywood trope, and not a seriously alleged alien. From Wikipedia: "Even though a few abduction or anal probe cases have referred to green skin, no report has ever involved anything that would fit the classic cultural stereotype of "Little Green Men". They are included here only for cultural reference."
Greys. These are the classic X-files alien. From Wikipedia: "They are grey-skinned humanoids, usually 3–4 feet tall, hairless, with large heads, black almond-shaped eyes, nostrils without a nose, slits for mouths, no ears and 3-4 fingers including thumb. Greys have been the predominant extraterrestrial beings of alleged alien contact since the 1960s."
Nordic Aliens, sometimes called Pleiadeans. From Wikipedia: "Humanoids with stereotypical "Nordic features" (tall, blonde hair, blue eyes) and have featured in several cases of contact. It is said they are from Ancient Earth but presenting themselves as ETs in the past, they moved from living on the surface to live underground around the Himalayas area after a natural disaster."
Reptilians. From Wikipedia: "Tall, scaly humanoids. Reptilian humanoid beings date back at least as far as Ancient Egypt, with the crocodile-headed river god Sobek. The Reptilian conspiracy theory has been advocated by David Icke."
I managed to find some rough sketches of these alien races that compare them in size and shape to humans.
Major bummer about everyone's dongs. Yikes, fellas.
Notice anything in common here? They're all humanoid.
Human beings are creative enough to imagine aliens, but apparently not creative enough to imagine them looking much different from ourselves. Oh sure, some have reptile skin or big black eyes, but they're all bi-pedal anthropomorphs with two arms, two legs, a mouth, and two forward-facing eyes. Even on Earth humans are the only animal that fits that description, but suddenly an alien arrives and - surprise! - he does too? Come on.
On a side note, my personal favorite is the "Nordic Alien". Blond hair, blue eyes, Nordic features... that's not an alien. That's just some guy named Sven. And if you've been abducted by a being with blond hair and blue eyes, I've got news for you: you're not an alien survivor, you're a kidnapping victim. Notify the police.
Let's get into the final stretch.
Alien Abductions
It's one thing to see a UFO in the sky and wonder if it's an extraterrestrial, but it's quite another to have one actually land in your yard. Yet there are thousands of people who claim to have been abducted by aliens, and a lot of them tell the same story: a craft appeared, beings took them onboard, and they were given a physical examination of some sort before being released. Sometimes this examination is a beam of light that scans them, and sometimes they are laid on a table and groped. Strangely, in many cases the aliens subject their captives to an anal probe.
But why? Why come all the way across the galaxy just to stick a wand up some redneck's fat ass? If aliens are advanced enough to figure out interstellar travel, shouldn't they know there's nothing of value up there? Wouldn't one probe have been enough? Maybe probe the first human you abduct, observe that it's unpleasant and disgusting, and move on? Yet if the stories are to be believed, these guys can't stop with this stuff.
"What did you learn from the latest round of probing, Snazzork?"
"Just this, captain: my wand gets filthy quickly, and once in a while a subject will turn around and wink at me."
"I see. We will continue until we understand."
The whole thing is patently absurd. But what's troubling is the sincerity of some of the people who claim to have been abducted. Take a look at this 1975 interview with a man who claims to have encountered aliens alongside his friend during a fishing trip.
I want to believe this man. It certainly seems like he believes his story. And he's not the only one. Watch this Oprah segment from (of course) the 1990s, where two siblings claim to have been abducted by aliens. They seem pretty sincere, even traumatized.
There are dozens, if not hundreds, of such interviews available for those who are curious. So what do we make of these accounts from seemingly normal people?
Well... nothing, really. These are unprovable and fantastic stories. Maybe they're real. But we should probably start by trying to find a rational explanation. For instance, many of these stories have hints of known psychological phenomena - sleep paralysis, for example, where the sufferer sees figures gathered around their bed and experiences a sense of extreme dread. There's also a vast host of mental illnesses that could be the cause. More likely still is hypnotic suggestions and implanted memories, since so many of these people "suddenly remember" something that happened in their childhood. It's a known psychological phenomenon that "repressed memories" are often just "implanted memories" - the repressed incidents recalled in adulthood never actually took place.
The suggestibility of children and false memories has led to people being imprisoned for decades over claims of ritual satanic child abuse, among other things. Under hypnosis, normal people have even "remembered" sexual abuse from their parents that never happened. This odd psychological phenomenon has destroyed families and ruined lives.
The human brain is extremely vulnerable to suggestion, and in the hands of the wrong hypnotherapist or doctor, people can weave together memories of fantastic things that are pure fiction. And yet a hypnotist's subject may believe them with the utmost conviction. I was molested. I was the victim of a satanic cabal of sexual abusers. I was abducted by aliens.
At the end of the day, is it possible that aliens are coming to Earth to play with fishermen's buttholes and break into little kids' rooms? Yes, technically. But is it likely? You can decide that for yourself. I say no.
End of Part One
You may be finishing this article thinking that I don't "believe" in aliens. But you'd be wrong. I will explain myself in the next article, so stay tuned.
This brings us to the end of Part One, the Trash Skunk Guide to Aliens in Pop Culture. In Part Two, we're going to discuss some more concrete theories, and get into the scientific view on extraterrestrial life. So say goodbye to anal probes and Nordic aliens, because we're going to be talking about the Fermi Paradox, Rare Earth Theory, the Great Filter, and the Drake Equation, among other things.
See you then, and remember - the truth is out there... and it's probably not up some poor guy's butt, so please stop looking.
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