[Maybe this is for the Debunking people thread?]
Consider the
hypothesis that Ashton Forbes is acting. His intent is to expose the crisis of credulity and poor research seen across the media and social media that orbit the UFO topic. What he's doing is a social experiment or a form of performance art, à la Alex Jones, a Shock-Jock routine but in the deadpan mode of Chris Morris or Sacha Baron Cohen.
Consider how the footprint of his campaign has grown. From 2,810 Twitter followers on 18 August 2022 to, only 16 months later, 69,000 and rising. Despite being on Twitter since 2014 there are no tweets available before he began promoting the hoax videos. He has flooded social media, from TikTok to Twitter and Reddit to podcasts on Spotify and Apple, and ensured the hoax videos appear on Internet Archive several times (posting as JustTrayLOL) there's even some mainstream media coverage such as that from IBTimes. In all it's been a masterfully choreographed campaign. It will likely make an excellent case study for media students.
As a mark of Forbes's breakout success, I first heard about his claims about the videos when a relative of mine, a street-smart twenty-something, forwarded one of Ashton's lengthy tweets with the comment "this is crazy!" So, I felt I had to pay some attention to what just immediately looked to me like a bad taste hoax.
However, in my opinion, the disappearance of MH370 is at least as, if not more, distasteful to promote an unsubstantiated theory about than Sandy Hook was. There are more people missing, presumed dead, and grieved over, with more unknowns about its cause. Yet, Forbes has done the rounds, talking to credulous podcasters (and some who are regretful for giving him a platform, such as Julian Dorey and Aiden Mattis) but most appear to nod along in apparent agreement to his suggestions that he has an inside line on
what's really going on, i.e. the idea that there is a secret government tech platform in the form of orbs that can magic a fully loaded airliner and it's mysterious cargo away. The idea that this could be true generally supports their prior belief in alien visitation, high-strangeness, or US Government conspiracy to hide tech possibly derived from extraterrestrials - and so they're happy to host him. After all he's got the buzz!
However, they don't ask him questions such as, "Have you spoken with any of the families? What do they think of your idea about what happened to their loved one/s? What would you say to them?" etc. (This is likely because Forbes casts doubt on their loss, suggesting that the victims may not be dead at all and could be in some kind of witness protection:
Source: https://x.com/UAPHeyoka/status/1734641778509152336?s=20
).
This is a failure of journalism, a crisis of critical reasoning - but is this what we're supposed to be paying attention to? I'd like to think so.
Take his conversation with Alex Jones, for example, proudly pinned to his Twitter profile. In it, Jones and his co-host riff off Forbes's nonsense claims with their own list of conspiratorial concerns. The globalists! The CIA! The US Government has satellites capable of "reading the logo in a golf ball" [at 12:20] and are watching us all 24/7, etc." It all fits so nicely, and in Jones' case, it helps rehabilitate him after being bankrupted by his abuse of Sandy Hook families by giving him visibility on his newly resurrected social media account.
Or so it would seem…
But as I watched the InfoWars video, I thought about how awkward it made Jones look and wondered if that was the real intent - part of the performance. Afterall here's Jones once again sliding toward the spectre of doubting the grief of families involved in a tragedy because it fits his worldview and will provoke lucrative engagement. Maybe Forbes wants Jones to stay cancelled?
If it's a performance it's one that seems perfectly scripted for a sympathetic audience on #ufotwitter and Reddit.
Design brief: create a character and fashion it after the most prominent skeptic known for unpacking videos about UFOs and Aliens (Sorry Mick; it's an opinion piece!) but make it an inverted version, a character who's on your side, dear believer, then use it to attack skeptics in the most hyperbolic and juvenile way ("he [Mick West] may be an
enemy of humanity") to prove allegiance to and provide some red meat for the "community."
Begin by having that character make some reasonable sober points based on science about the genuine mystery that is MH370, but then escalate the tone and content depending on the audience/forum.
Also, give that character the UFOlogy superpower of claiming it has a top-secret government clearance (of course, he can't say more about that or what relevance it has to the analysis of the videos) and stick to the script during interviews and see just how little pushback you get as you make more and more outlandish claims about "macroscopic quantum adherence" and "endothermic reactions" causing transportation portals.
The break of character seems to have been the remark he made to Danny Jones when dismissing the idea that the Pyromania VFX asset doesn't match the portal effect in the drone video, "
All dispersal patterns are the same; this is like saying my butthole is your butthole because they're similar," but all delivered with a surety (pardon the puns). But really, isn't that the point where a journalist should twig that their interviewee isn't serious or remotely logical or able to consider expert opinion, and question why they're even talking at all given the very real tragic event their conversation is associated with?
Add to this the fact that after briefly conceding the videos are hoaxed Forbes is now once again claiming they are a
real. "
Debunkers are on suicide watch!" [1:13:45]
Source: https://www.youtube.com/live/niNykdCVYUo?si=_KL6CyYn4vAfh7Sv&t=4425
he repeated several times on his live stream yesterday - a stream that more closely resembles a Twitch streamer playing a MMORPG game while pausing to thank people for their donations - than a real analyst solving an earth shattering mystery.
"Trust nothing unless it comes from me" is today's mantra. He revealed (but only partially) screenshots of some computer files he characterised as from the "leaker" of the videos, note he doesn't say "hoaxer" implying that any compositing or errors on the videos is a purposeful distraction to mask a genuine recording of the secret world dominating technology. He will release more details, but not just yet…soon. Sound familiar?
What works against this charitable hypothesis is that he's asked Jonas De Ro, the photographer who shot the stock image cloud images in Japan that appear in one of the videos, (bizarrely) to take down his YouTube video where he demonstrates they are the same image and as a consequence that the "satellite" video is a proven composite - a hoax.
In addition he is using his social media profiles to cast aspersions about Jonas, clipping and republishing remarks he's made years ago on unrelated YouTube videos about being able to manipulate photos, and implying some kind of impropriety (guess what Jonas is a VFX artist who would certainly be out of a job if he didn't know how to manipulate images!)
But for Forbes it's ALL a conspiracy. Don't you see?
So, yeah, I would like to believe that it's an act, albeit one done in bad taste. I'd like to believe that there's some nobility to it — that it's designed to expose how a glut of content-starved media channels becomes complicit in platforming and promoting stories like these hoax videos and their attendant ideas, allowing them to run and run and teach us why that's a bad thing.
Then again, it might just be shameless self-promotion on a par with Alex Jones' trolling of the Sandy Hook families.
