It occurred to me while reading about UFO whistleblower news. Why do the majority of UFO things occur in the United States rather than Russia, China, and other countries?

Edit: Thank you all for answers, they’re really helpful.

  • Maharashtra@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Consider these possibilities:

    • USA is considerably new country and built with no distinctive, coherent ancient history and mythology. As such, its people often grab every opportunity to produce a mythology they can consider their own. It makes them perceive as unnatural/supernatural things we, citizens of old world rationalize, or brush off as of little value.
    • USA is an experiment by whatever the “aliens” are, so it’s natural for them to supervise it with more interest than the rest of the world.
    • There are no aliens, it’s just USA itself testing new technologies of theirs.
    • Other superpowers are very secretive by default and they simply hush-hush every sighting they can.
    • PotjiePig@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Adding to this:

      America is often the voice of media, being the home of, Hollywood, reality TV as well as the loudest voices on the internet it’s natural that we perceive that to be the home of Alien stories.

      Being a ‘wealthy’ country: often a higher employment rate leads to an increase in extra curricular hobbies. Countries with less time to focus on things other than work will also have less time to expand on other interests. This can have a spin off effect of increased time spent day dreaming about lights in the sky.

      America is a very new country. There’s lots of vast open nothingness to explore. Considered a ‘frontier’. The concept of unexplored territory and unclaimed space of mystery is very much more engrained in American culture, unlike say anywhere in Europe where every square inch is claimed and has a city within an hour’s drive. All that empty nothingness with strange lights on the horizon can lead to more mysterious musings of what they might be.

      • Thavron@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        An small criticism about your third point is the fact that the world isn’t the USA and Europe. There are many areas in the world with vast open areas. I do agree that in combination with the other factors it makes sense.

  • kryptonicus@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Because the major export product of the United States is American culture. UFO/alien abduction/government cover-ups are kinda baked into American popular culture at this point. Just the idea that the government is simultaneously incompetent yet able to successfully hide far reaching evidence of alien visitation is as American as baseball and apple pie.

    I’ve no doubt people are looking up at the night sky all over the world and seeing things that they think are possibly alien craft. I’ve also no doubt that there are stories and folklore about abductions in every country on earth. But American culture is insidious and infects just about everything. This forces every other event to be reframed in reference to the American UFO phenomenon.

  • Chickenstalker@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Schizos, opioids, conspiracy nutjobs, lead poisoning and low education multiplied by spiritual bankruptcy. Deny it all you want, Yanks, but it’s true.

        • Attempted_Render@lemmy.sdf.org
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          1 year ago

          I think it’s more that they’ve been given the loudest megaphone. Think about how much other countries are exposed to US news and media and compare that to how much the US listens to news and media from other countries.

      • gk99@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Sure, but we have a huge chunk of the country inhabited mostly by tumbleweeds and people with less-than-awesome education. Plus, the concept of Area 51 has been around so long and has been so prolific it’s been constantly referenced in the mainstream, from Scooby-Doo to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater.

        • Drusas@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Add to this the fact that we produce the most advanced aircraft. Many sightings are probably of military crafts.

  • DaughterOfMars@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The real answer is that it doesn’t; you simply hear about it more. The other superpowers who are flying super-sonic jets around all day are much more secretive and if you think the retribution is bad here let me tell you it is worse in China or Russia. Also, people see these things with their naked eye all the time. Seriously, drive out to the mid-west and just look at the sky at night. You will see them up there, making their 90 degree turns and all. But the stigma is really so bad within our culture that people just don’t talk about it, and light pollution is so bad in the cities that you can’t see the sky anywhere near one.

  • Jordan_the_hutt@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The short answer is that it doesn’t. I think some of the most compelling cases I’ve seen have come out of South America, east Asia, and Europe.

    The long answer (is really just speculation on my part) the US dumps so much money into defense that the citizens don’t have healthcare, education, or decent social services. The USA is the richest nation on earth and many billions of dollars spent on defense are classified or unaccounted for. It seems likely to me that the US is one of the only nations with a program in place to study any recovered craft so any of our allies would likely send materials/craft to the US to be studied.

  • NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Usa’s society is very susceptible to conspiracy theories in general, and the UFO story is one. The question, whether there are actually aliens or not, steps back behind the conspiracy accusation against government/secret services/etc.

    • Mewtwo@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 year ago

      This is an interesting point. I know the military pushed the narrative back in the 50s about UFOs to hide their military tech and it snowballed (successfully?) from there.

      Does the Chinese populace have an attraction toward conspiracy theories or UFOs?

  • dogslayeggs@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Possibly because the US defense industry dwarfs the rest of the world and is constantly testing new technology that can be confused for UFOs. Russia and China, while also having large defense industries, are nowhere near what the US spends.

    • atlasraven31@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      We call it the F-16 Flying Saucer. Spins 360° to no-scope the target. Barf bags cost extra.

    • Sl00k@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      Also tagging onto this if there is a possibility of UFOs our defense radar systems are the only ones that would pick them up besides China’s.

      • ᗪᗩᗰᑎ@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        I’d hesitate to say that beings capable of intergalactic travel couldn’t easily cloak/hide themselves from our primitive technology. An ant can’t, with all its sensory capabilities, tell that it’s staring at a car even if its standing right in front of it.

  • dreadgoat@kbin.social
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    1 year ago
    1. Area 51 - a real USAF research facility where cutting edge aircraft were tested in the mid 20th century. People in the area truly did see Unidentified Flying Objects, in the sense that they saw aircraft the likes of which they had until then believed were impossible.
    2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Lazar who single-handedly reinvigorated the UFO conspiracy theories long after Area 51 had concluded most of its Cold War era secret tests.
  • HTTP_404_NotFound@lemmyonline.com
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    1 year ago

    Well…

    If you think about it…

    You hardly ever see any news from Russia or China… mostly because you don’t frequent Russia or China based websites.

    Also, turns out, their news generally isn’t in English, except for propaganda

  • woefkardoes@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    If you pull back all the layers of this onion you will most likely find out its just humans manipulating a situation to fund secret projects and funnel money into private corporations. It happens elsewhere as well but mostly under other different veils.

    • ShoePaste@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Dont forget, a distraction from all of our country’s and planets verry real problems!

  • Bob@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    UFOlogy is huge in Brazil. They have a lot of famous “incidents”, google Varginha alien and you’ll see what I mean.

    I’m not a believer at all, I just happen to know about it cause I lived there for a while and one of my coworkers was a UFO nut.

  • Kumabear@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    My theory… Lead pipes and general high level of heavy metals in the environment, especially in the areas many of these sightings happen in…

    Or idk aliens maybe…

  • kersploosh@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    It’s a cultural thing? Maybe there are a disproportionate number of alien believers in the US so they are more likely to attribute odd sightings to aliens.