I have to be honest- I’m really not a fan of social media. I think it should be more aptly called anti-social media. I wrote a recent post about why I just can’t squander all my time trying to promote myself or my books that way.
Being old now, I first got involved in the early stages of social media back in the late 90s, which were email list groups back then. People were pretty much as anti-social as they are today. There were your internet tough guys, your debunkers- your know-it-alls-that-don’t-know-shit– but pretend or delude themselves that they do.
And then there were the Trolls- an army of Mental Defectives who get off by throwing grenades into any discussion just to get attention they can’t get in real life. Like the living dead in a George Romero film, they just keep coming. And it doesn’t matter how many times you shoot their stupid arguments in the head. They just keep coming… and coming… and coming…
… And I suspect there were intelligence agency spooks, lurking among the craziness, monitoring the UFO community, looking to sow their disinformation…
The first thing about UFOs and disinformation I ever wrote was published by the Minnesota MUFON Journal in its May/June 1999 Issue #77 about disinformation techniques used in internet UFO forums.
I posted a set of observations to an internet list group. To my surprise, Minnesota MUFON requested permission to publish it in their monthly newsletter. Without really thinking, I said yes. In retrospect, I should have re-written it for publication- because it was very, very internet raw- having been written off the cuff for the online world. Such as things were at the time…
So after years of that nonsense- I signed off. Why bother?
I went in another direction. Without going into 20-or-so years of plot twists and turns (I’ll save that story for another day), the end result was my first book, The Day After the Singularity: UFOs & the Great Technological Quantum Leap.
All my efforts went into writing and producing the book. I didn’t put too much thought into promotion. I had some vague ideas that I might be able to use social media. Since the birth of the internet, UFOs were among the hottest topics – if not the hottest – and things have only gotten hotter ever since the government admitted there were real UFOs in 2017.
Nevertheless- The thinking went- that all I had to do was ‘plant the seed’ and let nature take its course. Gravity will take hold. That was the theory anyway. Should’ve known it was wishful thinking.
After the initial press release, I was fortunate enough to get some great exposure. UFO lobbyist Steven Bassett promoted my book on his vast Paradigm Research Group list. I was also fortunate enough to be a guest on Whitley Strieber’s Dreamland podcast. I’ll always be grateful to Whitley for giving me a platform to introduce my book to a segment of the UFO community of which I am a part. Again, great exposure. So, mission accomplished- seed planted.
Return to Social Media
I thought Reddit’s UFO forums might be a great place to spread the seed. Not so much. Reddit has several UFO-related forums with hundreds of thousands of members. In theory, I’d just make a post and let nature take its course, but no.
Right off the bat you’re subject to arrogant gatekeepers who get off by exercising their power to censor the forum. The moderators would not add my post on the grounds that it violated Reddit’s policy of using the forum to sell commercial products- as if I was hawking UFO-themed coffee mugs or something…
After a lot of back and forth between their numerous “moderators,” I was allowed to make a post about my book – as long as there were no links to Amazon or anywhere else the forum members could purchase the book – which took several days of excruciatingly stupid back and forth.
I didn’t care about book sales – and I still don’t – I was a member of these types of forums once upon a time, and I just wanted to share the fruits of my endeavors with the like-minded.
Then came the Troll-Zombie army in all its hostility- one after the other, attempting to take a bite out of me with the most ridiculous stupidity.
Whoever was there because they were actually interested learning something – and there were more than a few – were swamped by the haters just looking to get off.
I answered real, sincere questions, while fending off the zombies, as diplomatically and gracefully as possible, which is the only thing you can do if you want to maintain a sense of integrity, civility and credibility in a public forum.
There were two replies that I remember as being distinctly representative of the experience. In the first, I was taken to task for the subtitle of my book: UFOs & the Great Technological Quantum Leap for the use of the term, “quantum leap,” as an expression of great progress. I was informed, by one troll, that a quantum leap – being a measurement of distance on the sub-atomic scale, was actually a very tiny leap – because, you know, it’s on a sub-atomic scale. Which is actually pretty funny if you think about it- all things being relative.
Anyway, plenty of good-faith Redditors shot that stupid take down before I had the opportunity to respond that I was actually referring to Project Blue Book astronomer, J. Allen Hynek’s famous quote, “When the long-awaited solution to the UFO problem comes, I believe that it will prove to be not merely the next small step in the march of science, but a mighty and totally unexpected quantum leap.” That troll sure took his lumps for that mighty and totally unexpected stupidity.
I was also dissed by someone claiming to be an astronomer, who was incredibly condescending in rubbishing the premise of my book. In good faith, I explained that my book had been endorsed by astrophysicist, Paul LaViolette. Instead of giving me any credit, he went about dissing LaViolette.
He must’ve googled him or something. He came back with some gibberish that Dr. Paul believed in perpetual motion machines and was therefore, an idiot. Personally, I didn’t know anything about that. Although, truth be told, LaViolette was a maverick.
He most famously disproved the Big Bang theory in 1986 in the peer-reviewed Astrophysical journal using systems theory analysis. Recently, the James Webb space telescope has been proving him right despite the Copernicus/Pope/Galileo-like denials of mainstream science. His work on pulsar radio signals as ETI would be another example. His book, Secrets of Antigravity Propulsion would be yet another.
So it’s possible, I guess, he was an advocate for the perpetual motion machine- I didn’t know, but I wasn’t getting into it with this chowderhead. I quipped back, asking wasn’t the Universe itself a perpetual motion machine? In response, I got a lecture about the definition of a perpetual motion machine.
It’s different social media than the 90s- but it’s the same old internet. I’d link to the Reddit thread here, but I can’t because it’s been deleted. You can find any random Reddit thread from years ago, but not mine. Apparently, the moderators, who only begrudgingly allowed me to post about my book, deleted it. Then I stopped receiving Reddit UFO forum updates, which only recently resumed after years of not receiving any.
Yeah, for me, it’s beyond ironic, really, to do your best to bring as much clarity as possible to a subject so shrouded in controversy, only to be met with such hostility and censorship.
DERP
At this point, I have no plans to return to social media to promote my work, although I do have one recent anecdote to share.
I recently posted a reply on Billy Cox’s substack “Life in Jonestown” comments section regarding his recent reporting about former ATTIP director Lue Elzondo’s new book “Imminent.”
For those unfamiliar with his work, Billy Cox is one of the best UFO journalist/writers there is- if not the best. He’s not just the best among UFO journalists and writers; he’s among the best of all journalists and writers of any kind. He’s that good.
Anyway, Mr. Cox wrote about how Elizondo’s book contrasted Spielberg’s Close Encounter’s of the Third Kind film about “space brothers” with a real-life event that occurred in Colores, Brazil in the same year the movie was released (1977) in which UFOs were alleged to have savagely attacked the local populous resulting in numerous civilian injuries and deaths.
His post highlighted the contrast between the Alien Space Brother stereotype of the 60s as portrayed in CE3K and the sinister possibility of an Independence Day-type alien invader using a graphic of Spielberg’s gray alien smiley-faced greeting at the conclusion of CE3K with a big red X over it, meaning the “space brother” message was bullshit.
And well, to be honest, I am frustrated by the persistence of the space brother/evil alien invader debate, which I see as a gross oversimplification of the extraterrestrial presence. I felt compelled to post.
I’m unable to call someone I don’t know personally, Billy – it’s just a little informal for me, especially for someone whose work I hold in such high regard – so I started off with Dear Mr. Cox… also I didn’t want to come off as, kind of, sycophantic like a lot of his blog commenters come across to me.
I’m not going to cut and paste that part of Billy Cox’s blog here. Seems to me it would be a violation of proper blog etiquette to do that (If it’s on his blog it’s his blog content whether or not I am a contributor). So I’ll paraphrase.
I wrote that the Space Brother/Alien Invader debate was too simplistic- that UFOs are evidence that one or more extraterrestrial civilizations have successfully passed through the technological Singularity, merged with its artificial intelligence, and done what futurists like Ray Kurzweil say what we will do, which is spread throughout the Galaxy, engineering life, including here on Earth.
I said I thought we’d probably experience official contact with a parent civilization after we successfully navigated our own Singularity, if we’re able…
Billy Cox responded with an answer that I found to be both affirming and somewhat perplexing at the same time.
I will quote him here: “It took a space-invaders scenario to goad the military bureaucracy into taking a sober look at the issue; civilian science, after all, couldn’t be bothered. So you may be onto something.”
Yes, I know I’m definitely onto something. That’s why I wrote my first book. My frustration is that people like Billy Cox won’t discover or read my book for years, if ever. Former Canadian Minister of Defense, Paul Hellyer let Col. Corso’s The Day After Roswell languish on his bookshelf for over ten years until he got around to reading it. Finally, in 2011 he went public doing his best to make up lost time, having vetted Corso’s story.
It was probably too late. The Day After Roswell had been falsely labeled a literary hoax for years before Hellyer went public.
Also, what struck me as odd was the shade thrown at the “civilian scientific community,” by Cox for ignoring The Phenomenon. As I pointed out in my response, the scientific community was co-opted by the military-industrial complex during the WWII era and what remained in the civilian sector was basically threatened into silence by intelligence policies resulting from the 1953 Robertson panel and similar efforts.
My thought was that Billy Cox surely knew UFO history better than that- so what did his response mean? I can only guess, but I had the thought that he might suffer from the basic assumption that we’re being visited by extraterrestrials from a planet not too much more advanced than ours. So Space Brothers or Evil Alien Invaders are the most likely scenarios from that limited point of view.
I offered some observations about the scientific community and the military-industrial complex as stated above, and offered to send him a copy of my book.
It was a bit of a somewhat aggressive maneuver, I admit, and I knew he wouldn’t ask me to send him a copy on his blog.
Hopefully, he’ll look me up.
I did have one ulterior motive for mentioning my book, without being crass enough to attempt to advertise it on Cox’s blog. I did get a typical troll response from one of Billy’s readers, who attempted to tell me that Ray Kurzweil didn’t know what he was talking about and that artificial intelligence is bogus, etc.
It’s funny. There’s always some doofus on social media who will just rubbish anything regardless of your references. On Reddit, astrophysiciast Paul LaViolette is an idiot who doesn’t know anything- peer-reviewed journals be damned. On Billy Cox’s blog, Ray Kurzweil is just a doofus who doesn’t know anything, despite his career, a priori predictions, track record, etc.- according to somebody on the internet.
The really funny thing about the guy who attempted to lecture me on why Kurzweil is wrong is that my book lays out the evidence that what Kurzweil predicts will happen after we achieve the Singularity – has already happened – a long time ago in a Galaxy far, far, away… Forgive the creative license.
Derp.
I first heard the term watching the world series of poker on ESPN. Poker pro Tom Dwan used the term to describe another player’s moves. DERP is a word someone uses when someone else does or says something really silly or stupid. You know- if I have to explain it to you- DERP.
Yes, DERP is what you will run into on social media. Trolls and derp.