The demographics of Alien Truthers
Is it just an Old White Guys thing? Data provides the answer.
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Recently the “Contact in the Desert” UFO conference announced its speaker list for their 2024 conference (May 30 - June 3, Indian Wells, CA). I don’t know about you, but my first impression was “Holy crap, that’s a whole lot of Old White Guys.” Of the 50 speakers, all are white, only seven (14%) are women. We don’t know their ages, but from their headshots, only one looks like he might be under 40. Maybe it’s because I come from Southern California which is maximally diverse, but whenever I see such a huge homogenous group, it really jumps out at me.
A quick sidebar, as some readers will undoubtedly charge that it’s “woke” or some bullshit for me to consider these demographics. If that’s the label you need to apply to effectively market your conference (or any product or idea) to the target audience, well then, you’d better “woke the hell up.”
My personal impressions aside, Contact in the Desert’s speaker list raised an interesting question. One makes the assumption that the conference organizers make the fairly fundamental move of ensuring their speakers appeal to as much of their audience as possible, and the one thing we know about strange beliefs is they cut equally through all demographics: race, gender, age, socioeconomic status, education level, etc. — yet the organizers are targeting only old white guy attendees. Is the Alien Truther community uniquely homogenous, or are the organizers just trying to steer it that way?
Here’s a tweet from author Jason Colavito calling attention to this:
Jason’s comment about the diversity of aliens that these speakers believe in is pretty funny. They’ve got the grays, the Nordic, the interdimensional, the poltergeists, the Lemurians, the Plejarans… it’s a really long list. Their own diversity? Not so much.
So I asked my friend Joe Uscinski if he could weigh in on it. Joe’s lab at the University of Miami has one of the world’s great data collections on who believes what, focusing on conspiracy theories. Few have a deeper grip on the subject.
Joe replied:
…and that’s very true. Lots of people are interested in lots of things, but how many of them have the personal and professional connections to become a conference speaker (or TV presenter) on those things? The demographics of the believers can be whatever, but the demographics of conference presenters is likely to skew more toward people with the advantages needed to become a professional in that field.
Joe (well, now that I’m speaking of him in his professional capacity, let’s call him Dr. Uscinski) very generously shared with me a paper that he’s currently working on, showing the correlations between belief in a large number of conspiracy theories and factors such as age, race, nationality, and so forth. I recommend you follow Joe Uscinski on Xitter if you want to learn more about this and his work in general, which you do.
So here’s what we know. Because the population of the US is largely white, it wouldn’t make sense to say “x% of Alien Truthers are white” because of course they are, because that’s the skew of the population you’re drawing from. So instead, we look at individual populations regardless of their size, and see what their interests are.
Here’s the bottom line, on the specific question:
Do you think the government is keeping information from the public that shows U.F.O.'s (Unidentified Flying Objects) are real or that aliens have visited the Earth?
And when we look at the hard data, the answer we’re looking for is:
Being white, old, educated, and higher income make people, on average, less likely to believe this.
And:
Being Hispanic, young, less educated, less wealthy, are associated with being more likely to believe this.
So there we have it. My Open Letter to the Organizers of “Contact in the Desert” consists of the single sentence: You are doing a shitty job running your conference.
I’m a big believer in young children learning that every opportunity is open to them. I want young children to look at any profession that interests them, and see that successful people in that field look like them, come from where they come from, and are just like them. Then they believe they can do whatever they want. They can, but they need to believe they can. They also face other people in that field who don’t think they can or should, and those people are assholes but they do exist. Whatever triumphs — the assholes or the opportunity makers — is, in large part, up to the rest of us, as we all have opportunities to open or to close doors in whatever it is we do.
And, disclaimer, I live in a glass house here. If you look at Skeptoid Media’s board and staff you’ll see that we are not as successful as we want to be in appealing to all the young children out there who dream of a career in science communication. But we do have a DEI Officer, and he’s no schmuck as he holds the same role at Discover Financial Services. You will see us succeed better in our future programming.
If you dismiss all of this as “woke” then you are one of the assholes. Instead, consider it belief in our mutual powerful, united future.
Hmm. Perhaps the roster for Contact in the Desert reflects the organizers instead of potential attendees. There's no rule that says organizers must be perfect at what they do, only good enough to keep doing it. Good luck diversifying at Skeptoid. As an old White woman with no youngsters in my daily life, I know I am hopelessly uncool and behind the times. Don't want Bryan's podcast to suffer my fate.
Sidebar: Xitter. Perfect. Fewer letters needed than the currently-popular 'X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.'
Hi Brian, I have been a long time listener to your Skeptoid podcasts and generally agree with your point of view. Not so much with this post. I think the demographics of the attendees is more important than the presenters because they will determine the future of the UFO movement. Also, I thought the general tone was somewhat unkind to the “believers”. They are mostly harmless and I say live and let live. Anyway, keep on creating your great skeptical podcasts and posts!.