Space Oddity

Imagine if you will for a moment you are a peaceful extraterrestrial from the planet Gliese 581 C (one of earth's closest habitable neighbors), you decide to take a little galactic vacation in your brand new flying saucer to a little planet called Earth. Even at warp speed it is a long trip and you want to study up so you download all of humanity's digital media; television, movies, books, the entire internet(you're an advanced alien species that can do that sort of thing). The first major pattern that begins to arise is something called War: humans murdering one another over things like natural resources, religion, ideals. Throughout the course of history humans have continued to design new and more efficient ways of ending life—weapons so incredibly powerful that humans narrowly missed ending it all. Another trend that you observe is people making a mess, for some reason human beings have a nasty habit of polluting the land, the air and the water of the one planet that they call home.   

All of these peculiar negative practices aside, there are still some people that understand what matters. These shining minds are often hated and even killed at times but people eventually learn from them. You see that there is hope if people stop fearing change so much. 

In your research you stumble upon a strange tribe of earthlings with a large territory called the United States of America. These Americans love to talk; they talk when they are sad, they talk when the are happy

and they talk about things they know nothing about. There have been Americans that have said some pretty fantastic things but others are just loud. Many Americans love to watch a strange form of entertainment called "news" that takes both real and made up stories, mashes them together and reinforces peoples beliefs. Americans also love certain people referred to as "celebrities", watching and judging their every move. People create impossible standards of beauty and sucess from seeing these "Stars", who themselves can always even attain. America is a strange place for sure but so is all of humanity if you really think about it. People as a society however are great at telling stories, expressed beautifully through music, literature, film, television and art. Sadly not everyone's story is shown, so many voices are not heard because they don't fit within the made up concept of normal.

Humanity is riddled with flaws but is also capable of so very much; there is darkness in society but there is light in each person. If you were this alien—now knowing what you do about earth—would you turn right around and head home or give this place a chance? Would you want meet a human if you weren't one?