The possibility of aliens being real is something that has plagued humanity for millennia. Strange cave drawings from those who came before us, mysterious alleged civilizations, weird sightings in the sky.
All of that is elusive — and doesn't much help to figure out if there is life beyond Earth. But, at the same time, something as obvious as your phone intensely beeping and professing an alien invasion also doesn't seem like too much proof, either.
Well, that's what millions of Brazilians woke up to at around 1:30 am on June 19 and 20. According to Dexerto, a wild message was beamed straight into the phones of people in Belo Horizonte.
It read, "Protect yourselves: ALIEN ATTACK, PEOPLE, WE HAVE ARRIVED!" The message arrived in the form of an official extreme alert — the type that's usually used for natural disasters.
Another message was sent to the nation's capital, Rio de Janeiro. But this one almost seemed like the "aliens" weren't so bothered — it was all in lowercase, and there were spelling mistakes.
It read, "misantropo ADRESS RJ burros dms pprt." That roughly translates to (spelling mistakes included), "misanthropy adress RIO DE JANEIRO dumb*sses dms for real".
A lot of the other messages also mentioned "misanthropy", which refers to a hatred of humanity.
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The Aliens' Messages Were Attributed to Hackers
But it doesn't take an eagle eye to see that this wasn't, in fact, aliens. Brazil's National Civil Protection agency explained the messages were sent by an "unauthorized third party".
But they couldn't do too much about it. What they did do was end up disabling the whole system to make sure it couldn't be misused further.
The case has been handed over to Brazil's Federal Police. Here's hoping they catch the aliens — I mean hackers — involved.
But while this wasn't a case of E.T. phoning home, it caused quite the stir on social media. Brazilians across the country used the opportunity to make fun of things. The sleep deprivation probably contributed to the hilarity of the incident.
While this doesn't give us any more information as to whether aliens are real, it tells us one thing; maybe if they do invade, we should expect them to be texting us. But my question is, can't we just block their number?
