Perspective: UFOsMysterious Case of the Vanishing UFOs

All over the rest of the world UFOs are in sharp decline, and may soon disappear altogether. People are simply not spotting unidentified spacecraft like they used to. Alien abductions are at an all-time low. UFO-spotting organizations are closing down. Since 2014 alien sightings have halved. The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one, and dropping.

“Where have all the UFOs gone?” Ben Macintyre asks in The Times, noting that “The recent drastic worldwide decline of unexplained phenomena is one of the odder unexplained phenomena of modern times.”

The internet is partly to blame. The web is the natural home of conspiracy but it produces an atmosphere inimical to flying saucers and alien life forms generally. “Although claims of paranormal activity can spread across the internet at astonishing speed, they also tend to be challenged and refuted far faster. The same technology that allows you to video the alien invasion force hovering over the back garden is the same technology your neighbor can use to show that it is just his Chinese lantern.”

He explains:

The camera-phone has increased the burden of evidence on so-called “experiencers”. Say you were abducted by little green men, transported to a spaceship hovering over Luton and seduced by a beautiful blonde alien called Xanax, but you failed to take a single selfie; then, in the Instagram age, it didn’t happen.

Governments have also lost interest in the subject. A secret study of UFOs undertaken by the Ministry of Defense between 1996 and 2000 and codenamed Project Condign was publicly released in 2006 with the conclusion: “No artefacts of unknown or unexplained origin have been reported or handed to the UK authorities, despite thousands of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena reports.”

Three years later, the MoD closed down its UFO investigations unit.

He adds:

But the death of the UFO also marks a wider shift in human credulity. In an era of fake news, when everyone has become used to disbelieving the claims of politicians, media and advertisers, the report of another inexplicable light in the sky is greeted with a disbelieving shrug.

Accounts that would once have caused widespread interest, even panic, today gain little traction.