2024 has barely begun, and already, there have been two viral news stories featuring tall aliens, the creatures supposedly captured via heavily pixelated videos.
The fact that two similar stories went viral in the first half of January highlights the increased public interest in aliens and paranormal phenomena, likely ignited by Congress taking the time to hear UFO testimony.
The two viral alien stories are eerily similar: both feature heavily pixelated videos depicting giant humanoid extraterrestrial beings. Both stories feature alleged extraterrestrial beings simply walking around, with no abductions, close encounters, or strange sightings in the sky.
On New Year’s Day, a fight broke out between teenagers outside a shopping mall in Miami. Apparently, the teenagers were lighting fireworks to shoot, which caused a great deal of panic and prompted a widespread police response.
Days later, online commentators and conspiracy influencers posted photographs of terrified crowds and swarms of police cars, in an attempt to sow doubt that such chaos could be caused simply by a teenage brawl.
From there, a rumor spread that police were responding to eyewitness sightings of giant extraterrestrial beings roaming the mall, for some reason. The rumor turns out to have emerged through a single post on X (Twitter) from an account with less than a thousand fans and a Premium X subscription that grants a checkmark.
The story continued to grow, as TikTok and X commentators contributed to the narrative of a “cover-up,” claiming that the Miami airport had been closed in response to an alien threat and that the region was experiencing power outages.
Miami Police Department have since confirmed that these claims were false, even releasing a statement mocking the rumors on social media.
The strange thing about this story was the lack of evidence: the rumor spread with nothing but a single blurry video to back it up.
Eyewitness testimony didn’t exist, but many influencers were content to spread the rumor anyway, acknowledging that the topic generated a huge turnout. One TikToker even went so far as to claim that he had noticed the creature, only to post a video a few days later. to explain that he’s joking.
A heavily pixelated video featuring a giant blob presented as evidence through believers, but the footage isn’t transparent enough to draw any conclusions, let alone discover that a lanky alien visited the mall.
Less than a week later, another blurry video purporting to show a giant alien was uploaded to Instagram and circulated on social media before being covered by several media outlets.
The footage was filmed on the Brazilian island of Ilha do Mel and features blurry figures walking on a hill. Eyewitness Sara Dalete, who filmed the footage, claimed that the area was inaccessible and that the figures appeared to be moving very quickly.
The footage prompted commenters to make jokes, create memes, and speculate, but some saw the video as evidence of an otherworldly presence. Again, the photographs were too blurry to draw conclusions.
Footballer Peter Crouch, known for being very tall, jokingly took charge of the sighting, writing: “We were on holiday with relatives, please respect our privacy at the time. “
Days later, Italian basketball player Felipe Motta, who plays for the Brazilian team Flamengo, claimed to be one of the figures in the video. “I went on a trail to enjoy nature and this view, but then people took a photo of me, sent it to the gossip page and called me strange.”
A spokesperson for the state of Paraná took the opportunity to promote tourism following the incident, saying:
“Our summer comes from another world. Even humans come here to enjoy our coastline.
The similarity between the two viral stories is surprising, as is the banality of the supposed encounters: extraterrestrial beings like to stop at shopping centers (at least, when they are not on an excursion). From an evidence perspective, the bar was incredibly low, with very blurry videos likely to spark debate on social media.
We’re in the age of generative AI: isn’t there some virtual prankster capable of creating a more engaging, less pixelated clip of extraterrestrial visitors?
Concerts, parades and fireworks are filmed from all angles with a multitude of smartphones, but when so-called extraterrestrial beings appear, the resulting images are always just a pathetic trail of pixels.
Perhaps the ultra-low solution is the secret recipe for going viral, leaving enough room for imagination.
It appears that public interest in extraterrestrials has increased after Congress heard testimony from former Air Force intelligence chief David Grusch. The so-called “UFO whistleblower” claimed that the U. S. government owns crashed extraterrestrial spacecraft, some of which contain “non-human” biological products.
Right-wing conspiracy media personalities like Alex Jones and Tucker Carlson have been fanning the flames of extraterrestrial lore for some time now, while popular podcaster Joe Rogan has been discussing UFO stories for many years.
Grusch made many outlandish claims, but did not mention the length of the so-called “organics. “It’s unclear why giant entities have dominated the alien narrative lately, especially the “little green men” stereotype.
However, the trope of the tall, skinny alien is prevalent in pop culture; for example, the engineers of Ridley Scott’s Prometheus. In addition, web folklore is full of lanky creatures like Slenderman and Sirenhead.
It may be that blurry photographs are more convincing if they are accompanied by claims that the subject is unusually large, as length is difficult to measure through a pixelated video. A small figure can be easily explained as a child, but a giant entity might be more intriguing to believers.
A year ago, a TikToker’s alleged sighting of a “giant” on a mountain went viral; The grainy video looked strikingly like recent photographs from Brazil and sparked wordless reactions on Twitter (X) at the time.
Online, the release of the two “alien” videos was accompanied by discussions about the “Nephilim,” a race of giants spoken of in the Bible.
The nature of the Nephilim is disputed by scholars, but they are sometimes interpreted as offspring of men and fallen angels, imbuing the sightings with a Lord-of-the-Rings-esque backstory, and suggesting that alien lore can exist comfortably within a religious framework.
The lifestyles of otherworldly entities are contrary to the classic devout worldview; However, thanks to social media, a new era of superstition has emerged; Fortunately, extraterrestrial beings coexist with ghosts, fairies, and God, in a melting pot of ideals called “conspirituality. “
Admittedly, much of the observation around extraterrestrial stories was tongue-in-cheek, with many commentators making memes and jokes.
The stories went viral due to the combined engagement of casual commentators, skeptics, and earnest believers. Outside of the memes and irony, the surge of interest in aliens seems to be driven by a desire to believe in something — anything beyond the depressing news cycle and daily doomscrolling.
Dasha Nekrasova, host of the Red Scare podcast, made a compelling comment when talking about her shift from ambitious atheism to devout Catholicism: speaking to Interview magazine, she explained her new religion as a reaction to fashionable nihilism:
“The wonderful thing about faith is that it doesn’t have to be based on rational thinking. We see many other people coming back to the faith because it’s all crazy and useless, so why not be Catholic?
Despite Nekrasova’s adherence to the faith, polls show that trust in organized faith is declining, especially among Gen Z. But confidence in the supernatural is growing, as the younger generation turns out to share Nekrasova’s sentiment, why not?
The paranormal podcast Otherworld, hosted by Jack Wagner, has proven to be very popular among Gen Z. Wagner listens to eyewitness accounts of supernatural experiences, stories with an open brain and allowing his listeners to draw their own conclusions.
Not all content creators share Wagner’s easygoing approach — others have jumped on the “conspirituality” bandwagon with an alarming confidence, drawing conclusions that seem based on little more than vibes, particularly on TikTok.
Online commentators have long noted that TikTok has sparked a surge of interest in the paranormal. TikTok’s ruleset is notorious for locking users into narrow niches, which is why subcultures thrive on the video-sharing platform.
Believers in aliens, fairies, witchcraft, and ghosts are validating their supernatural reports on TikTok, many of which are encouraged through pop culture tropes.
Popular TikToker Colette Reynolds, recently dubbed the “conspiracy queen” by Rolling Stone, was one of the content creators who jumped on the Miami mall alien story. Even after the supernatural elements were debunked, Reynolds still claims to believe, and her take on the situation is straight out of Netflix’s Stranger Things.
Reynolds told Rolling Stone that he believes the Miami mall incident is similar to the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest particle accelerator. Reynolds said:
“There were young people in this mall who opened a door that allowed those creatures to be 8 to 10 feet tall. Several witnesses have said that. I believe that those demons are beginning to come into our world to prepare, and they know that their time is running out and getting closer.
Notably, in that same interview, Reynolds admits that he doubled down on his conspiratorial comments on TikTok after noticing that the topic expanded his engagement.
2024 is still young, so time will tell if the “big aliens” trend will continue throughout the year; Maybe next time believers will get a high-resolution video.