The news is eating it up because idiots are consuming every bit of garbage information they will put out. TikTokers get thousands of views because people are fooled into thinking something is going on. If there are drones, it’s some ding dongs who are getting a kick out of the attention it’s getting.

Iran is not invading with drones. It’s not aliens from the ocean. It’s not a some secret government program. It’s proof that American education has failed and raised the majority population to be mouth breathing morons.

End rant.

  • MrVilliam@lemm.ee
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    6 days ago

    Media is desperate for a distraction from people collectively being at least not upset about the CEO getting killed. If they don’t jingle some keys in front of our faces asap, they risk us finally putting aside petty differences to band together over the actual class struggles that we all face together. Together we stand, divided we fall.

  • 🐋 Color 🍁 ♀@lemm.ee
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    6 days ago

    I think some people believe that life is like a movie and any remotely weird thing that happens which they can’t explain off-hand must be a sign of something extraordinary. It also makes great clickbait. The video I saw was pretty blurry but without even knowing the context of the video I knew it was someone messing around with a drone.

      • RobotToaster@mander.xyz
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        6 days ago

        To be fair, a top secret black project being forced to use navigation lights is exactly the sort of bureaucracy I would expect from the US government.

      • 🐋 Color 🍁 ♀@lemm.ee
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        6 days ago

        Exactly! Everyone knows alien spacecraft use Vorblorbox X-45J premium hypno-lights, not Earthling navigation lights.

        (Jokes aside, agreed!)

        • NineMileTower@lemmy.worldOP
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          6 days ago

          That goes without saying. The X-45J model has superior phase shifting capabilities for the low price of 45,000 Galactic Union Credits.

          • Asafum@feddit.nl
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            6 days ago

            45,000 Galactic Union Credits.

            Goddamn central galaxy bankers, I refuse to submit! I only pay in Betelgeusian gold coins!

      • Gork@lemm.ee
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        6 days ago

        Mimicry? People will assume it’s an aircraft if it has the green light (right), red light (left) and strobe.

        If I were an alien in a UFO this would be a sensible thing to do to blend in.

        • NineMileTower@lemmy.worldOP
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          6 days ago

          That’s outlandish. To assume that a race of space aliens has the technology to travel thousands of light years, but needs to trick us with fake lights is asinine.

  • SomeAmateur@sh.itjust.works
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    6 days ago

    Jersey may very well be blown out of proportion. Two reddit videos were military aircraft. One that made the front page was a C-17 landing (video had no audio). Another (not front page) was dash cam footage of two C-130Js flying low in formation with their visible formation light strips on.

    Reminds me of when the power went out in NYC or LA (I forget) and people thought it was an alien invasion because most of them were seeing the stars better than at any point in their lives.

    But there are real issues with drones right now. Wright Patterson AFB operations were shut down for a while due to drone activity. Langley has been dealing with multiple cases of multiple drones over the summer. And a Chinese national was flying a drone around Vandenberg SFB California and was trying to hop the first flight back to China when they were detained.

    • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      Reminds me of when the power went out in NYC or LA (I forget) and people thought it was an alien invasion because most of them were seeing the stars better than at any point in their lives.

      Lol, reminds me of when electricity went out in my neighborhood for an hour and I googled it and didn’t find any news about it and thought: must be government cover up of secret government operations

      Then I posted about it on reddit and a redditor pointed out that this is normal and small incidents like a power outage in a localized area for hour wouldn’t be newsworthy, then I realized I was being silly, probably too much conspiracy-minded lol

  • TriflingToad@sh.itjust.works
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    5 days ago

    All of America: agrees that killing a CEO is morally acceptable
    News: “uh. uhmm… UHHH there’s a drone over there, look at that. *jiggles keys in direction of a kid flying an Amazon drone* yeah doesn’t that make you mad?”

    And for reference yeah drones are an issue I guess. There’s one that flies over my school from (I assume) one of the neighbors houses. It’s creepy, but I’m far more concerned with the houses with confederate flags I see on my way home.

    • Fades@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      Okay but these drone rumblings and hearings have been going on since before the election. Sure a distraction but not one cooked up specifically for the elite as they clutch their pearls in regards to one of their own being held accountable by the people

  • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    6 days ago

    There’s no way this is aliens or foreign military.

    If that’s the case, they’d be shot down, and the streets around the area would be swarming with National Guard or Military personnel.

    I don’t see any reports of New Jersey having National Guard or Military on the streets.

    Conclusion: Its not aliens or foreign military.

    Most likely its military contractors testing new technology.

    • FigMcLargeHuge@sh.itjust.works
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      6 days ago

      I don’t see any reports of New Jersey having National Guard or Military on the streets.

      I am also assuming that New Jersey doesn’t have any optometrists, because some of the ‘drones’ they have shown on national news are very clearly passenger jets.

    • Brosplosion@lemm.ee
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      6 days ago

      If it were a bad actor drone it wouldn’t have lights on it informing everyone it’s there.

    • Nougat@fedia.io
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      6 days ago

      Most likely its military contractors testing new technology.

      No, military contractors wouldn’t test new technology right out where everyone can see it. They would do it out west in the desert where nobody is.

      • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        One reason I could think of, is that its kinda difficult to test a system that identify a human apart from trees or buildings in the middle of the desert. Just do some test flights over a real envionment and that enough sample data to calibrate their image identification system.

        They could just say say nothing about it and people would think “alien” before they think its military / military contractors testing new tech.

        Some kids with drones aren’t gonna be able to fly in a military base and fly away without it getting shot down, and the military probably has signal jammers that would disrupt connection between the drone and the remote. Why would the military just allow civillians to fly drones over their base and not do any thing about it?

        • Nougat@fedia.io
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          6 days ago

          Then why would you do it over the most densely populated part of the country, with full lighting? Why not, say, Billings, Montana, without lights?

          • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            6 days ago

            They could test nukes on an island in the middle of the ocean, yet they chose to do it right on US soil in the continential us. Sometimes they just do things like that… 🤷‍♂️

              • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                6 days ago

                Well a drone isn’t a nuke, they would probably be more liberal about potential testing grounds. They won’t be carrying any bombs on it, just testing the drone’s capability to identify targets. If its an AI system they are trying to build, they’d need as much data as possible. Real data I mean, not a bunch of military dudes roleplaying civillians in the middle of the desert. In a real war, any AI they want to use wouldn’t be used on dudes out of nowhere cosplaying. They could be trying to analyze human behavior and try to distinguish a civillian behavior, apart from, say a cop, or other non-civillians. Potentially, it could be used to identify behavior that indicate someone who is not a civillian, and are potential enemy combantants, and that capability that can distinguish between those different categories of people could be useful in the future of drone warfare.

                Back then, if you told people that the US military were testing nukes on the continential US, they probably have the same reaction as you did about the US military potentially testing drones over New Jersey.

                (But this is all just theories on why they might want to test this over a populated area. I’m not stating these as facts, its just theories.)

    • Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      6 days ago

      No need to really shoot them down, just jam them in some way and let them crash and/or follow them wherever they go when they lose signal (assuming multi-copter style drones).

  • dhork@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    Someone is obviously doing something, but once it hit the news it all got blown out of proportion. The fucking media is still reporting that ex-Maryland Governor Larry Hogan saw drones there, even though the video he posted is shit and everyone realizes they are just stars.

    It seems like the kind of stunt Musk would do…

    • takeda@lemmy.world
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      To me it looks someone made fake video on social media, others joined and made other fakes, many states looking at the sky and also recorded planes thinking they are drones.

      It looks like the whole event only exists on the social media.

      • dhork@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        There have obviously been legit sightings. They closed that airport in the Hudson Valley for an hour because of a drone sighting, and they also restricted airspace over Wright Patterson AFB at one point. I don’t think the FAA or Air Force does that on the basis of an unverified tweet with grainy video.

        https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/15/us/drone-sightings-east-coast/index.html

        With that said, though, now that it has entered the national consciousness everyone is “seeing” them. I think most of the ones in your social media feed for the past two or three weeks are fake.

        • takeda@lemmy.world
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          6 days ago

          When I say fake I mean it could be CG or someone flying and filming their own drone.

    • NineMileTower@lemmy.worldOP
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      6 days ago

      Media and TikTok profit off of ad revenue. The more eyes on the content, the higher the ad revenue.

      • paraphrand@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        So, all the governors and congress people are getting kickbacks from the tiktokers?

        I know many of them, like Tim Burchett, are just ranting for their crazy base and see this as an opportunity to talk shit about the Biden admin. But you said it’s all about getting paid by covering the hysteria.

        • NineMileTower@lemmy.worldOP
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          6 days ago

          No. I’m saying there is nothing going on and the media is covering something that isn’t even happening and cashing in on it.

          • paraphrand@lemmy.world
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            6 days ago

            There is absolutely nothing going on, huh?

            That’s a strong take. Wow. I don’t agree with that. I agree there is at least 50% hysteria going on, but 100%? I don’t think so.

  • RaoulDook@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    Sure, a “cash grab” is why they closed the airspace over Wright Patterson AFB in Ohio today, and why members of the DoD, senators, and governors are publicly calling for more federal response.

    What really seems to be going on is that there are a bunch of orb-like UFOs exploring our sensitive areas, and some secret military drones are chasing them all over the place. The gov’t is in straight bullshit mode saying there’s nothing going on, while citizens all over the place are recording videos of both orbs and drones.