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Lesley

Grey Matter

12.9.8

Complaining about the Complainers

As some of you may have heard, the magazine Alien Worlds has quit publishing.

This is a sad thing because, contrary to what some may think, I really do want all UFO Magazines and TV shows to succeed. That is a good thing, not bad. The end of Alien Worlds brought back to mind a point that I try to make to people who judge UFO Magazine on what they consider to be woo-woo content or crazy theories.

The point I try to make is that it is very hard to keep a UFO related magazine going. You have to appeal to as many different readers as possible and that story that they may think is crap may have attracted hundreds of readers that wouldn't have purchased it otherwise. Diversity is key because you need to appeal to as many different people as possible.

Now, I am not saying that Alien Worlds didn't attract many different types of people. It had many great people writing for it, including BoA's Richard Thomas, so I know that it must have. I cited AW because it was a good magazine (or at least to my knowledge) and yet it obviously takes a lot more than that to keep a magazine going.

I have heard many complain that there are no purely scientific Ufology magazines or TV shows. My reply is that there isn't and will never be because that would only appeal to Ufologists and would never make it past the first couple issues or TV shows because there just aren't very many people interested on that level. Aside from that, there is only so much that can be proved scientifically -- it is a very small amount.

My suggestion to those who continually whine and pretend to be outraged at the woo-wooness of UFO Magazine is to start their own magazine. Out of all the people who seem to think a Ufology "scientific journal" is so tremendously important, none of them are willing to put their money and time where their mouth is. My suspicion is that they know very well that idea would be unlikely to break even monetarily, let alone make a profit. Besides, then they would have nothing to complain about and they seem to so enjoy complaining about the work others do.

Of course, those are also the same types of people who pop up every once in a while with the notion of a Ufology group that would weed out all the bad apples and only present the scientific side of Ufology. This idea starts up every so often until the person or persons pushing it realize that not that many people care about having such a group. Most people in Ufology are pretty independent and don't give a crap about belonging to some group. Oh, they may be irritated by the hoaxes and whatever crazies are out there, but they know those people will be there with or without a group.

Yeah, I am just basically complaining about the complainers. For the most part, the complainers do nothing other than complaining. They are always going to do something, like start a group, a magazine or even create a TV show, but they never do. Most of them do no real research other than reading the research others have done and complaining about it and saying what they would have done differently. There is always the opportunity for them to do the research differently, but they never do that either.

I am at a loss as to why anyone within Ufology pays these people any attention or listens to their ideas. Frankly, they are equal with debunkers in my book. In fact, if your contribution to Ufology consists of nothing but pointing out what is wrong -- you are a debunker, whether you think you are or not.

This is not the Bush mentality of being with us or against us. I understand that sometimes Ufologists genuinely disagree with one another. You can disagree with others, but when that becomes the main component of your known personality and/or research -- to disagree with others, you are no longer helping Ufology. You just look like an egomaniacal asshole and although others may pretend to like you it is only because unlike you they try to play well with others and don't like spending their time defending themselves and tearing down others.

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