Conspiracy Theorists Weigh In on 4chan Alien Mystery
The internet is currently full of conspiracy theories as many people talk about an alien's alleged appearance in the Arizona desert recently.
On Thursday, the 4chan community noticed a strange post of what looked like an extraterrestrial species on the website's image board forums. Witnesses claim that the original thread that shared the image went online "anywhere between 12am and 2am" The photo, which was posted on 4chan's /pol/ board, was titled "24489 Taken Aprox 24 miles north west of Luke Airforce Base Phoenix Az. Lab H4C." It was allegedly online for 30 to 90 seconds.
According to a post on Reddit, 4chan soon went down and the thread was deleted. It could not even be found in the archive.
Based on the witnesses' descriptions which were compiled on a Pastebin post, the photo shows an alien that looked like a reptile with yellow scales and "small pursed lips." Its black eyes supposedly looked like dried prunes and its features seemed human-like, except for its big head.
Those who saw the 4chan thread allegedly felt odd, with some feeling sick and some, vomiting. The alien is said to be the one who took its own photo and posted it on the website. The site crashing is allegedly the government's work to wipe out any evidence.
The Luke Air Force Base in Arizona, where the alien reportedly appeared, was established during World War II. Currently, it is a training base for F-16 Fighting Falcon pilots, the Air Force's single-engine supersonic multirole fighter aircraft.
After the post went viral, many commented that the photo was probably the one taken by Jonathan Reed, a Seattle psychologist who claimed he encountered an alien in the Cascade Mountains in 1996.
iDigital Times points out one of the 4chan users' explanations on why the site crashed that day. According to the post, the /pol/ board usually goes down for routine maintenance for about 10 minutes, usually around 3 to 4 a.m. EST.
As for the image being deleted, conspiracy theorists have different ideas. One claims that the NSA has new software that can "suck photo data back out of people's hard drives and computer caches."