Alien Bird Box Challenge

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The other day at Mrs. M.'s request the two of us watched Bird Box on Netflix.  If you have seen any trailers or heard anything about it I am not giving anything away by saying it is about these creatures that cause you to kill yourself if you look at them.  The movie did not get great reviews by critics but what do they know?  Bird Box was viewed by 45 million people in its first week.  I wonder how they know if one person is watching at a time, or five.

Me, I am a big fan of post-apocalyptic books and movies, even bad post-apocalyptic movies, so I would have enjoyed it even if the critics were right.  I have seen I am Legend about a dozen times.  But really, Bird Box was great.  Even Mrs. M. liked it and she once told me Sandra Bullock is the worst actress ever.

I then learned that my daughter has been playing a game with her friends called Bird Box.  It is basically Tag, with your eyes closed.  One girl walked into the slide and hurt herself.  But that did not dissuade the kids from continuing the game.

I asked her if the other kids even knew what the movie was.  She said all her friends had seen it.  I was not fully convinced that this was true.  But nonetheless we decided to let the whole family watch it.  I made the kids close their eyes during the brief sex scene.  I told them, whatever you do, do not open your eyes or you will die.  OK, I did not say they would die but they did close their eyes for that part.  They kept asking me afterwards why they had to close their eyes.  Oh, it's late!  'Night kids, love you.

Now I am reading that it is not just silly kids who are playing Bird Box.  Grown-upped adults are doing it too.  The level and amount of stupidity in this world never ceases to amaze me - which got me thinking - thinking about aliens (of course).  Do people do stupid things like this on other planets?

Do Aliens do Stupid Things?

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We like to think of aliens as brilliant, highly-evolved beings, capable of extraordinary feats.  First of all, they can get from there to here.  That is enough in itself.  But then folklore often dictates that aliens are capable of mental telepathy, levitation, or even invisibility.  Assuming our visitors do not have any supernatural abilities (I am ready to believe but I need to see it first) we do know they can travel through space with technology we can not imagine, so they are pretty darned smart.  Would these same people be down with the Bird Box Challenge?  What about the Tide Pod Challenge?

Do smart people do silly things?  Albert Einstein is synonymous with genius-level intelligence.  I am no Einstein but I think his most famous photo is one where he is acting silly.  That is probably because it is ironic.  But irony notwithstanding the photo exists of a literal Einstein acting silly. 

Do Aliens do Stupid Things?

In my own experience, I have had the privilege of working with some brilliant people when I was a software engineer, the kind of people who require you to kick your brain into that extra gear you never use, just to keep up with their everyday manner of speaking.  Every single one of them had a great sense of humor.  You could even say some of them were a little silly.  But I am struggling to think of something stupid that any of them did.  I can not imagine any of my techie nerd buddies eating Tide or walking into a curb, wearing a blindfold.  But I can imagine aliens doing it.

Yes, our alien visitors are likely smarter than we are, by orders of magnitude.  But not every alien visits Earth.  Here on Earth we would never send someone who eats Tide into space - perhaps unless it was a suicide mission or we needed people to mine asteroids.  But these are not the yahoos we would send as ambassadors of our planet on an intergalactic mission to another planet.  They might do something undiplomatic and unintentionally doom our entire world to destruction.

Alien Yahoos

I suspect aliens would also keep their slack-jawed yokels on the ground too.  Sure, once in a while, one of these dummies would win Lotto, buy a Winnebago, and end up here in our atmosphere.  But for the most part the stupid aliens would not make it to our planet.  At any rate, there probably are unintelligent aliens.  For all we know, it could be the majority of them.  We only see the cream of the crop because that is who they send into space.  But the rest of them are back home, eating Tide and walking into the slide on the playground, wearing a blindfold.

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If you have seen an alien spaceship or any type of unidentified flying object (UFO) contact me using the Contact form on this page.  You may remain anonymous if you want.  I will not ridicule you or try to tell you why you are wrong.  I get it, I saw one too.

Thank you for reading and keep an eye on the sky.