The Deniability of Our Existence

Human beings have been pumping the air on our planet and the space through which it revolves with a plethora of broadcasts across the electromagnetic spectrum. Simply put, we are a very noisy planet. We've been broadcasting radio in its various forms (shortwave, AM, FM, VHF, UHF) since the late 1800s. Television is more contemporary of a broadcast medium, coming about either right before or right after World War I, depending on your definition of television and who's side you take. Today, even more signals are broadcast. Cellular phones, microwave transmissions, more radio and television stations than ever... The airwaves are a thick crowded mess out there. The one thing that perhaps no one ever thought of when first creating these transmitting devices that employ the electromagnetic spectrum as their medium was that, given enough power behind their transmission, any signal can escape Terra and bounce out into the cosmos beyond, flying across the universe just waiting for someone or something to pick it up and decipher it.

This is the main idea behind the movie Contact when an alien civilization from the star Vega send us a sequence of prime numbers. For those who haven't seen the movie, the scientists at the Very Large Array in New Mexico later find a television broadcast of Adolph Hitler from the Berlin Olympics in 1936 is part of the transmission as well, purported to be the first ever television signal with the power to reach a star 25.3 light-years away. This is where I get into the main idea for this posting: The inadvertent broadcasting of our media to the stars and the possible consequences it might have.

There are two main theories concerning this. The first simply is Contact. Very simply, aliens find our transmissions, discover we are developed enough to try and contact, then do so in a peaceful manner, even going so far as to send encoded transmission describing the finer intricacies of the technology necessary to get in contact with them. A very idealist, optimistic view of the universe, but when talking of alien worlds and alien species anything is possible and nothing should be ruled out in the least (Except holodecks and hot busty Borg chicks). The second, more familiar theory to us all, is the hostile alien invasion after 100 years of inadvertently turning our planet into a big neon sign saying "PRIME FOR THE TAKING!" via the electromagnetic spectrum. The baddies fly in, take us over, kill us off, force us to join against our will.... You choose the adventure. A lesser known option is the aliens come to find us in order to force their views upon us. Probably best embodied in the 1950s sci-fi classic The Day The Earth Stood Still, Earth is visited by a very intelligent humanoid alien named Klaatu that comes with a startling and important message: Come to peace, stop killing, and work together, or else an alien civilization will see to it that a force as destabilizing as warrior humans will never gain the capability to leave our planet. Somewhere between the two, I believe, and certainly reminiscent of the father-figure who knows how to beat hard with the rod only to play a game of catch with his son afterwards.

What, then, I propose is a fourth alternative become the norm for these scenarios: Aliens avoiding Earth like the Plague.

This idea has been expressed in a few books, movies, etc. But never with real credibility or in a believable fashion. So, here to sway all of you into believing that this is the most likely course of action taken by wayfaring aliens who happen to venture close to our planet, here is a semi-comprehensive list on all the reasons why our broadcasts across space have made us the Goth-kid-reject of the Milky Way:

-Laxative commercials
-Condom commercials
-Local car dealership commercials
-Strange, lucid prescription drug commercials
-Reality TV
-Brittney Spears
-Hentai
-Bill O'Reilly
-Tucker Carlson
-Crossfire
-Hannity & Colmes
-Richard Novak
-George W Bush speeches
-Howard Stern
-The History/Hitler Channel
-Xanga
-LiveJournal
-MySpace
-Christina Aguilera
-Squidbillies
-Televangelists
-eBaumsworld
-Anarchist Vampire
-LoveLine
-Country, post-Garth Brooks
-Anything with emo, screamo, hardcore, goth, poser-punk, pop-punk, or any other psuedogenre that primarily shops at Hot Topic for their clothing ensembles
-Law and Order: SVU
-80s Sitcoms
-Anna Nicole Smith
-Terri Schiavo
-When Animals Attack
-Lifetime, and especially Lifetime movies
-News Corporation
-Religious fanatics burning down international institutions because of a CARTOON
-fetish Internet-exclusive porn
-Pauly Shore
-Tanya Harding
-OJ Simpson
-Michael Jackson (unless he is a sleeper agent, like Dennis Rodman)
-Anne Heche
-Preparation H commercials
-Erectile Dysfunction commercials
-Amy Heckerling movies
-Wes Craven movies
-Vanilla Ice
-Chacarron
-maxi pad commercials
-YTMND
-YTMNSFW
-Ashlee Simpson
-Jessica Simpson
-Savage Love
-Mullets
-AOL Instant Messenger

Dear God. Perhaps instead of avoiding us, whatever-alien-civilization-that-be, no matter how peaceful, will feel compelled to eradicate us simply for the safety of the universe or the removal of any of the above-listed things. The scariest thing of all is, I could have gone on longer.

We're doomed.