
“Ancient Aliens”: The History Channel’s Assault on Truth - samclemens
https://www.theawl.com/2017/09/ancient-aliens-is-everything-thats-wrong-with-america/
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teh_klev
Jeez I thought this hokum went out with the ark and Erich von Daniken's
"Chariots of the Gods?" and "Return to the Stars" \- which I fully admit to
having read at around the age of 8-9 years old during a family camping holiday
round Scotland (along with a healthy dose of Hitchcock's "Three Investigators"
kids novels which I had an insatiable appetite for).

Anyway...then Carl Sagan happened for me and I was rescued.

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netzone
Oh, man. The Investigators were awesome! Made me as a kid want to play around
in scrapyards, also getting kicked out of a fair few.

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lithos
I was amused watching ancient aliens when they were playing with WWII. At one
point they ended up getting to Nazi 'levitation tech' which was literally a
primative jet engine attached to generators to make magnetic fields.

The thing is that rather than grabbing serious drawings or plans, they grabbed
abbreviated ones that were obviously used for training and the type of doodles
someone qualifying on a system would make to explain their knowledge (military
personnel proving they know enough to trust/fly/maintain their gear). And got
utterly obsessed with a hex transformer (uses multiple transformers to shift
the waveform of ac, then converts the peaks to get really high voltage DC),
declaring alien technology that would never work. It really drove home the
point to me how easy it is to eventually find a professional that will say
what you want.

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sevensor
In the early '00s, we joked that it was the History-of-World-War-II Channel.
Sometimes they'd rotate to other wars in which they could portray the United
States in a heroic light. Back then, they were pandering with selectively
chosen facts. Now they're just pandering with straight-up BS.

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the_trapper
I remember it being called the "Hitler Channel" at one point because of all
the WW2 content.

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LJLJLJLJ
I actually sent them an email complaining about their scheduling and excessive
alien theory usage around +/\- 3 years ago. Also I raised questions about
their so-called specialists. They responded but I was already fed up with
their Constant pawn shop hysteria and alien jumbled mess

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peatmoss
Wait, does anyone take this seriously? I thought the show was simply satire /
a stoner meme.

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krapp
>Wait, does anyone take this seriously?

Unfortunately, people have been taking this stuff seriously since Erich Von
Daniken published Chariots of the Gods in the late 60s, which is how, AFAIK,
the ancient astronaut meme got started.

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peatmoss
Man, I'm in the wrong line of business. I should get into hucksterism.

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fractallyte
It worked for L Ron Hubbard (founder of Scientology)!

"You wanta make _real_ money, you gotta start a _religion_!"

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yitchelle
They need to have an episode on Flat Earth.

