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Posted: 11/16/2025 11:49:41 AM EDT
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Why have descriptions and sightings of UFOs—or UAPs—shifted so dramatically from generation to generation? During WWII, people reported “foo fighters” darting around bombers; in the 1950s, the classic metallic flying discs dominated reports; today, we hear about physics-defying orbs, pill-shaped craft, and enormous silent triangles. Is this simply the evolution of human imagination and technological context? Is it shaped by cultural expectations and the limits of our own perception? Or is there something deeper at work—something interacting with us in a way that adapts to each era? Some say people saw pie-plate UFOs in the 50s because that was the imagery saturating sci-fi and pulp magazines. Now we live in a world shaped by CGI, drones, and digital everything, so maybe our sightings shift to match the aesthetics of our time. That’s the psychological angle. But there’s a more intriguing possibility: what if whatever is behind these encounters—if anything truly is—knows how we perceive reality and adjusts its appearance accordingly? Maybe it presents itself in forms we can comprehend, or in shapes that won’t shock us into total disbelief. Or perhaps its “form” isn’t fixed at all; maybe we’re only seeing our minds’ best attempts at interpreting something fundamentally outside our perceptual bandwidth. In that view, each era’s UFO sightings are less a snapshot of the craft themselves, and more a mirror of us: our culture, our fears, our technology, our symbolic language. Whether these phenomena are psychological, extraterrestrial, interdimensional, or something we don’t yet have words for, the shifting shapes might be telling us more about human consciousness than about the visitors—if visitors are even involved. |
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One of the foremost UFO/UAP researchers in the past several decades wrote a book about this, back in 1969. He was a major contributor to Spielberg's "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", and was even loosely portrayed in the movie. Attached File |
Pour over coffee is best coffee.
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Originally Posted By corwin1968: One of the foremost UFO/UAP researchers in the past several decades wrote a book about this, back in 1969. He was a major contributor to Spielberg's "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", and was even loosely portrayed in the movie. https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/42575/711p9WnMZCL__SL1360__jpg-3660096.JPG I hate the cover cropped the artwork. The full art is this. Attached File |
“The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.” - Henri Bergson
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The bible referred to them as wheels in the sky, if you want to lump them all together. What most of them are, is our brains filling in the blanks of something most likely terrestrial, or in some cases glitches in our minds, and our minds simply go through images that we've seen that fit. That's why the objects have changed. When popular culture had spaceships on movies and tv that were saucer shaped or cigar shaped, that's what we saw. The better Hollywood got with special effects, our minds filled in the missing information with those things. The "ships" haven't changed to anything never before seen. They've changed to fit the descriptions seen in movies. |
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There have always been many types of UFO's. Shapes and sizes. Take a walk on the wild side and explore the abduction stuff. Where descriptions of the crafts are given. With many different types of beings. It's a bizarre and hard to fathom subject that seems to be unlikely. However witnessed by too many apparently normal people by multiple witnesses in many cases |
| Alien upgrades......kinda like how our southern aliens go out and buy a longer ladder. |
Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power. F. Douglass
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I think the mental aspect is the most important part of UFO's and other fringe topics like the Mandela effect or even ancient Egypt. By studying the other fringe fields you can learn more about how topics are treated and how to investigate a UFO sighting to try and find the truth. The idea that UFO's have changed is false, it's a very common belief, but it's not backed up by research of historical sightings. The reason the idea is so prevalent is group think and media reports that create that thinking. Once something becomes doctrine it's nearly impossible to change it, if you look at the unfinished Obelisk in Egypt, nobody knows how they were going to get it out of the hole despite the answer being very simple with no new technologies required. Institutional belief has prevented new theories from being considered. Before the breath mints came out in the 70's tic tac shaped UFO's were called stubby cigars. Despite the media reporting everything in the 40's-50's as a saucer, most of the were other shapes including Kenneth Arnold's sighting that started the whole thing. Going back to biblical reports sightings have been fairly consistent, you have temporary spikes of one type or another such as in the 50's and 60's when there was an increased amount of sightings by airline pilots of tube shaped silver and or fiery objects flying at roughly 60,000 feet, early on the were slow but later in the timeline they started moving at batshit crazy speeds. They accounted for half the overall sightings for a couple decades, but with the U-2 being painted black and the YF-12 being announced those sightings started to diminish. If you remove the misidentified man made objects and hoaxes the remaining sightings are shockingly consistent, but you have to go with original descriptions because people will twist them to be whatever they want. |
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Originally Posted By IT_Cowboy: Why have descriptions and sightings of UFOs—or UAPs—shifted so dramatically from generation to generation? During WWII, people reported “foo fighters” darting around bombers; in the 1950s, the classic metallic flying discs dominated reports; today, we hear about physics-defying orbs, pill-shaped craft, and enormous silent triangles. Is this simply the evolution of human imagination and technological context? Is it shaped by cultural expectations and the limits of our own perception? Or is there something deeper at work—something interacting with us in a way that adapts to each era? Some say people saw pie-plate UFOs in the 50s because that was the imagery saturating sci-fi and pulp magazines. Now we live in a world shaped by CGI, drones, and digital everything, so maybe our sightings shift to match the aesthetics of our time. That’s the psychological angle. But there’s a more intriguing possibility: what if whatever is behind these encounters—if anything truly is—knows how we perceive reality and adjusts its appearance accordingly? Maybe it presents itself in forms we can comprehend, or in shapes that won’t shock us into total disbelief. Or perhaps its “form” isn’t fixed at all; maybe we’re only seeing our minds’ best attempts at interpreting something fundamentally outside our perceptual bandwidth. In that view, each era’s UFO sightings are less a snapshot of the craft themselves, and more a mirror of us: our culture, our fears, our technology, our symbolic language. Whether these phenomena are psychological, extraterrestrial, interdimensional, or something we don’t yet have words for, the shifting shapes might be telling us more about human consciousness than about the visitors—if visitors are even involved. They haven't changed that much through the years if you include all of the data sets. Seems there are aspects that change or have their season but not all. Foo fighters were described as glowing orbs or balls of fire that would fly in formations or along side our formations. The same thing is described today, loitering and following Naval formations/test pilots seeing these in the Gulf of America. Just glowing orbs/balls of orange fire like light. I do agree that a percentage of sightings have window dressings of the times in which they were witnessed. I believe it's possible that something akin to psychic camouflage could explain. "People" with abilities to create or project directly into the mind or bypass our desktop icon sensory interface could have strange effects. A "craft" projecting concepts directly into the minds of passersby could create any manner of interpretations. |
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Originally Posted By Redman556: The bible referred to them as wheels in the sky, if you want to lump them all together. What most of them are, is our brains filling in the blanks of something most likely terrestrial, or in some cases glitches in our minds, and our minds simply go through images that we've seen that fit. That's why the objects have changed. When popular culture had spaceships on movies and tv that were saucer shaped or cigar shaped, that's what we saw. The better Hollywood got with special effects, our minds filled in the missing information with those things. The "ships" haven't changed to anything never before seen. They've changed to fit the descriptions seen in movies. Maybe movies were a way to train our brains to see something incomprehensible. |
“The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.” - Henri Bergson
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Originally Posted By IT_Cowboy: But there’s a more intriguing possibility: what if whatever is behind these encounters—if anything truly is—knows how we perceive reality and adjusts its appearance accordingly? Maybe it presents itself in forms we can comprehend, or in shapes that won’t shock us into total disbelief. Or perhaps its “form” isn’t fixed at all; maybe we’re only seeing our minds’ best attempts at interpreting something fundamentally outside our perceptual bandwidth. In that view, each era’s UFO sightings are less a snapshot of the craft themselves, and more a mirror of us: our culture, our fears, our technology, our symbolic language. Whether these phenomena are psychological, extraterrestrial, interdimensional, or something we don’t yet have words for, the shifting shapes might be telling us more about human consciousness than about the visitors—if visitors are even involved. Another example is encounters. First Angels and Demons, then helmeted space men, Venusians, Martians, Greys, Nordics, etc... Almost like the anomalies adapt to current Zeitgeist. |
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We know from aviation accident investigation that witnesses are incredibly bad at accurately recollecting details of events they've witnessed. The human mind tends to fill in details of things it doesn't understand with related information about things that it does understand -- often familiar cultural references can fill in. |
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Originally Posted By M4BlackRifle: The Internet and YouTube are the new sci-fi and pulp magazines. All the iPhones, and every UAP still looks like this. People see what they want to see, even if it is not what they think they see. . https://i.ibb.co/rRyxcrtC/ufo.jpg Go ahead and try it next time you see an airplane flying over. I've taken cell photos of distant hot air balloons and SpaceX launches. To the naked eye, it was plain as day what I was seeing. The photos returned nothing but a tiny speck (in the case of the balloon) and an indistinguishable blob of orange with the rocket launch. Using "the photos suck" as some sort of proof that people aren't seeing strange things is foolish and simply not true. I've personally seen 3 highly unusual things without explanation and one of those was while wearing white phosphor binos with a recording device attached. The camera didn't pick up what I saw because the resolution wasn't good enough. |
Everything posted above is factual. Maybe.
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To answer the question in the OP, there are 3 leading theories: 1) What we see are purpose-built disposable craft. Each one is manufactured according to its mission/purpose. 2) Different species = different craft. 3) We're seeing only what they want us to see and the appearance is altered to fit cultural paradigms. |
Everything posted above is factual. Maybe.
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Originally Posted By ngc1300: 200 years ago they were sea monsters. They are demons able to take many forms. There have been a few interviews set up to show that, like why they won't go swimming and things like, Gets the bad part of both ants and a supersonic jet fighter who's not going to live long if she RTFM and doesn't push it, it's an alarm and if repeated thresholds are broken, guitar is given away and ant is food. Makes reading a boring manual and not knowing about many facts is a sign you're just filling your brain with advertisements on streaming media, especially the stuff you cannot listen to without internet connection, that will get them here. |
The person who complains most, and is the most critical of others has the most to hide.
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
--ETA: Unintended Hijack, sorry about that, there's still no way to split a thread in half so I just grabbed a 'general talk" here and I posted to the wrong thread so now I'm done.  Bumping with more information, he's a former mixing guy for audio/video and now explains a lot of stuff, including reviews of guitars to interviews with singers, but he gets over 5 Million followers. He points out how all the music is pre-cut as well as the videos and wardrobe and whatnot. Then they look for a cute girl that can maybe sing a bit but the recording is done by professionals with her singing through autotune.  How Do People NOT Know This About Pop Music? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l93JOUJZEoA Then apply this to everything you see on TV, same reason why population persecution is "I don't get fooled" attitude and then they see this and it explains a lot of the control the music/movie/youtube content (ToS, etc) we see today. Also, remember the broadcasting "we need to do this to save America... " all from different markets, exact same wording read off the teleprompter. Keep calling somebody Hitler and that is continually paraded without through, not sure if it's inability to think or people are too smart to get caught has the bigger share of those who just ignore all of it. Welcome to some BS actually getting out there on social media (some, they use right wing evil tactics kind of thing. So... Mere-Exposure Effect |
The person who complains most, and is the most critical of others has the most to hide.
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
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Here's a long documentary and a short one first. Bands can't pump out a song a month, even with 4 playing unless they are absolutely stellar at it since they spend 6-8 months touring and new album is rumored to be in the works. Then when it comes to recording, the tweak vocals with pitch shift (bucket brigade analog delay line (now all digital ) / spring reverb (now all digital/ while the band is out touring and doing all the shenanigans movies like Spinal Tap, The Wall and several others. Basically, if you sign for a label, they own you. This new pay for a song you like is a platform I can get behind since most albums have one good song which was finished from a concept and a humming along practice on keyboard to get a melody that sounds good and decide on the 4 chord song like everybody else, no time to invent when you know the 4 chords will hold up most anybody with a copy of pro tools, Audition, and a lot of others, some high end to movie theater quality to anybody, that's the bright side of the internet, the downside is anybody can make music they think is good.  "Today, a musician is an ambitious somebody with a keyboard and a bunch of time." (From one of those videos mentioned in these clips): The shorter one with a guy who is great at describing music, seems he was an engineer mix table guy now reliving his high school days of around the late 70s and he talks about a ton of songs with the tracks singled out (guitar track, drum track, vocals track, etc) Short and straight to the point, the next one really dives in when you realize how much music people listen to (Mere exposure effect) So you get a hit, most people don't care what the song is but the same ones keep being played over and over when they are a tiny fraction of what is available. So long as the new keywords are in music, TV, and movies, nobody losing money and everybody is sitting around smiling with Soma. Things they hate become things they love if there isn't another option. How Do People NOT Know This About Pop Music? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l93JOUJZEoA The Long One:  The Musicians Behind The Stars | Hired Gun | Full Music Documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BabX8k1myTc |
The person who complains most, and is the most critical of others has the most to hide.
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
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If your running an exposure campaign (cite Jacques Vallée) on people, then you have to present yourself as recognizable, but not so far ahead as to be unrecognizable or as something that cant be achieved. Otherwise it's uninfluential. There have been many reports however of people looking at the same phenomenon but reporting something different. The crowd at fatima is a good example. |