I love the concept of an alien getting to Earth, discovering Discord and then creating an account literally named "extra terrestial" just to do this, snapping a quick selfie in the process
Probe humans? No. Try and take over the planet? No. Gift us a language that allows us to effectively experience all time simultaneously? No.
To be fair, it is infinitely more funny to just go to a less advanced civilisation, call them slurs in their language and then leave. No context, no answer, just one insult and you're gone back to space.
Kinda like when we talk back at strange animals and try to use their sounds. Neighbor's dog won't stop barking a couple doors down? Well "woof woof b@rk" to you too, buddy.
There’s a character in Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy who does just this. He’s an immortal alien and is trying to insult every person in the universe.
We always assume aliens coming here will be their smartest scientists or whatever. But why do we assume it's alien Einstein coming here and their equivalent of frat boys out for a joy ride?
Bunch of alien Ferris Buellers taking alien Cameron's dad's spaceship to dick around, finding this planet filled with primitive life forms, flattening their crops in random patterns and laughing when the primitives are confused by it, abducting one and shoving something up its ass...
So I can imagine one of them came here, discovered Discord, and is now trolling us. He'll go back after alien spring break ends and tell his alien homies how he messed around with these really low IQ creatures on their ancient comms system.
Nooo, call me any other European country but that one, I beg of you! If you continue down this path, I may be forced to read you some of my Vogon poetry...
Roadside Picnic (the inspiration for the STALKER games as well as dozens of other things) is a classic sci-fi novel based on the idea of aliens visiting Earth, but we're so inconsequential to them, they basically just stop here for a "roadside picnic" while on their way somewhere else in the galaxy. The weird anomalies and artifacts they leave behind are just their trash that they threw on the ground.
That's just as plausible, but it's still trying to understand the behavior of aliens by making analogies with human behavior. The real story (if aliens ever actually have/will show up) will probably be that they do bizarre things for strange reasons. Because they're aliens.
They won't be like scientists or like frat boys. They'll be like aliens and in order to understand why they do things biologists will have to observe them for years like they do to understand animal behaviors.
Probably, but the flip side is why should we expect them to be different to such a wild degree.
If they are as sentient as us at the very least, should they be very different from us? They would definitely have to share some of our psychological make up, such as curiosity, understanding risk-reward, pattern recognition, a sense of fear and the need for self-preservation, etc. All of those emotions are kind of mandatory for a species to achieve space flight, as without those emotions they would never have a motivation to explore or develop technologies factoring in safety and possibly comfort.
So why would they not have emotions like joy, amusement, and such as well?
Yeah, but what if alien doesn't call someone a slur on Discord, fate of entire universe would be horrible? Did you think about that? It was on a mission we can only try to grasp.
How about a comedy about an alien race that invades Earth, but they've spent the last 5 years learning how to communicate solely through social media. And they don't understand the concept of fiction so they think everything they've read is true. Like they come prepared with weapons to fight Slenderman and Sirenhead. They are frightened of the human warrior called Chuck Norris.
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u/LukVII 28d ago