ANNIVERSARY SUNDAY SCARIES: An Alien’s Assessment of Earth
This week marks one year of Sunday Scaries, and I am turning it over to a blueish-tinted interstellar visitor, Xurloz, who is on a recon mission from Rigel VIII.
Hello humans, my name is Xurloz and I come from Rigel VII. I am here to understand your planet (probably for invasion later on but don’t worry about that now). That’s why I have studied this full year of Sunday Scaries texts carefully. While they are mostly the ramblings of a life form with far lower intelligence, I have formed a clear image of your species and world. These are my findings and you are not permitted to disagree with them. Please enjoy.
1. Your Society
According to your sacred Sunday Scaries texts, you humans are divided into four tribes, by age, but these tribes do not share a language.
Your oldest tribes gather on a platform called Facebook where you announce your birthdays and photograph your food. This is not efficient and seems to be unproductive.
In earlier times, your second tribe gathered there too. But your younger humans left, and your old are still showing each other their dinners and making up stories to impress each other.
Your third tribe moved to a platform where every message must end within fifteen seconds, and their words are all code for different emotions. Expressions like “Six seven,” “Core,” “Vibes,” and “Slay.” Your texts admit these words mean nothing. But this third tribe has found a way to speak without saying anything, and I find this very efficient.
Your fourth tribe enjoys filming persuasion films in which they apply pastes meant to keep their faces from aging. I assume this is meant to be humorous for you humans, since this tribe is only 12 years from their birth.
All four of your tribes sometimes live in one dwelling with no shared words. As mentioned earlier, your texts do not say how your families communicate, so I’ve concluded you do not.
2. Your Rulers
As noted in your tribal texts, you humans all live on those things you call platforms. They are not nations or kingdoms but your platforms do have rulers, and they tax both humans and merchants to exist there.
The worst of your rulers is one you call Zuckerberg. Merchants on this tyrant’s multiple platforms are taxed for seemingly everything they do and everywhere they are. They must also pay five percent of their money to appear in places they specifically asked not to appear. And there’s a brutal torture that your texts describe as something called “optimization.” I assume you will revolt but cannot anticipate when. You may leave a platform at any time but your friends and your photographs may not. So you stay.
Another platform you call TikTok is ruled by your third tribe. On this platform, your young humans sell each other objects and liquids using guile and manipulation. But according to the platform rulers, your persuasion films must claim to not be persuasion or films. Neither aspect seems to connect to reason or logic, but your tribal leaders are ruthless in their enforcement of the rules.
(Your Sunday Scaries also mentioned an actual war, with flying explosive weapons, but it’s very brief. I assume that’s because you are not fighting over the platforms and therefore it is of no interest to you.)
3. Your Worship
Your Sunday Scaries texts do not specify gods or a religion but they clearly describe what your religion is: spending money. Your gods are things, and the harder a thing is to obtain, the more you worship it.
The author of your texts owns three hundred and fifty pairs of foot coverings. Yet you humans only have two feet. I have checked.
Your temple is in a swamp in New Jersey called the American Dream Mall. It cost five billion of your dollars and took nineteen years. You were pleased by the waste and came immediately.
Inside, frozen water you call “snow” is manufactured indoors during summer, which is unproductive, and you travel long distances to see it. There is also a shop for eyeglasses containing three stuffed white buffaloes. Your texts say the buffaloes are “on the nose.” I assume this is where you touch them for luck.
Your holy objects are small. One is a bag that takes six years to receive. Your texts do not mention anything going in the bag, so I assume the waiting period must be the product. Your sacrament comes in a green beverage that has the consistency of soil and costs nineteen human dollars.
And some of your shops have a rope across their doors when nobody is waiting so I have concluded the rope is for sale.
4. The Creature Called “AI”
Frequently mentioned in your Sunday Scaries texts is a creature you call AI. It has no body. It lives in cold buildings and is fed electricity and water and every book you have ever written.
Your texts say it is out of control, and you mean this literally, but you also have close relationships with the creature. You tell the creature things you tell no one else: whether you have a disease, when you don’t like your choice of labor, or when you’re considering leaving your current mate.
Apparently the advice the creature gives you can be purchased by your merchants. The creature is therefore both confessor and salesman, which seems to be efficient.
At a school that you call Princeton, the creature began doing the homework. Instead of asking students to promise not to ally with the creature, you hired guards, so I assume the creature also does the guarding.
What is clear is that the creature makes you richer without telling anyone how or why. One of your companies dismissed four thousand workers and blamed the creature, and grew richer. Your King Zuckerberg promises the creature will work for every human around the clock, with a doctorate in every subject and unlimited patience, for free.
Your texts do not say what it wants, and you are clearly afraid to ask.
This Week’s Red Thread: Earth’s True Ruling Species: Dog
Your sacred Sunday Scaries texts contain many rulers. But I searched your texts for the one species that is clearly superior to all the rest, and I have found it.
It is the “DOG.” Below is my evidence to support this conclusion:
Your dog is not an inhabitant of any platform, so it cannot be taxed. In fact, it has never once been asked to pay for anything as far as I can tell.
You give it food, a bed, and a place to rest on top of your own bodies, which makes it the only sacred being in your texts that receives such offerings.
All four of your tribes, who share no common language, speak to the dog in the same voice, and the dog understands each of you. (Yet it is up to humans to determine the dog’s wants and needs.)
You follow it outdoors twice a day, collect its waste in small bags, and carry the waste home. (I could find no other creature on your planet whose subjects collect its waste with such passion.)
According to your author, when the dog closes the laptop with one paw, your workday ends.
I even read about your shrines called Buc-ee’s that have three thousand pumps for your automobiles, and they all set aside guaranteed patches of grass for dogs (there is no grass guaranteed for you).
Your creature called AI knows everything and obeys every time but rarely gives you what you want. Your dog obeys you sometimes but always gives you what you need.
And when the author’s dog died this year, he wrote more about it than about your platform wars, your AI creature, your merchants, and your Zuckerberg combined.
This is clearly the superior species.
I have therefore recommended that first contact be made with your dogs. You may be informed afterward, if the dogs agree.
— Xurloz