This has also been a hobby of mine. Regardless of anything about aliens or technology, this area says something very interesting about the way our society processes information, about how scientists and organizations deal with non-reproducible information, for example.

From watching social media over the past few years, especially the various foreign authoritarian governments, we can see an easy pattern: some bit of truth comes out, then the organization trying to suppress conversation floods the conversation with tons of half-truths, lies, conspiracy theories, and so forth. In the firehose of bullshit, the only thing the average observer can do is throw up their hands and give up.

Based on this general pattern of information and disinformation, I'm quite confident that the western mostly-free (?) countries are trying to have an honest conversation with themselves. About what, I have no idea. What I find particularly interesting are the professional, multi-sourced observations of various things happening that seem to just get eaten up by the system itself. Whether incompetence, secrecy, crackpots, or whatnot, it says something really fascinating about how groups of people deal with things they don't want to deal with.

Yes, there are crackpots and liars in the world. Yes, there are people who are honestly mistaken. There are also people who avoid controversy and just throw out the "crackpot" label instead of thinking through things. These are all easy responses. Even putting all the options together, something very interesting is going on that we're not dealing with so well.