Most reports you personally hear about come from the US. You won't be able to get an easy overview of the entire dataset by doing a few google searches, you need to dig into this stuff a bit.
I've done the digging, it's US everywhere lol. It's not that they don't exist from other countries, its just that like half of them conservatively speaking are from the US, when the US only has 300 million people or so. You also don't see nearly as many UFO hunters or whatever elsewhere.
There are plenty of prominent cases that resist trivial debunking that are outside of the US, like the Ariel school incident or the Belgian UFO wave for example. I don't think it's particularly significant that most of the reported cases are in the US. The phenomenon is clearly worldwide.
Also if it is ET it would make sense they'd pay special attention to the US considering it's the current hegemon.
The Belgian sighting has no significant differences to many other supposed sightings that have been debunked over and over. Something unusual happens, then it gets some attention, and then a million people get convinced they saw something odd because it's not hard to convince yourself you are seeing something odd by looking at the sky. Hell, a bunch of people often confuse the planet Venus for a UFO, because it is often close to the horizon and really bright. It's really not hard at all to get thousands and thousands of "sightings" after aggressively reporting on supposed UFOs. I remember when I was a little kid and I had seen some alien movie or whatever and in the following days I saw an oddly placed street lamp on some hill which I thought was a UFO, until I saw it again the next day and figured out what it was. The Ariel school thing happened to primary school children. I can't be sure exactly what it was of course but again, children are susceptible to mass hysteria especially in stressful environments and conditions, as well as really honestly believing that something which didn't happen to them actually did. Again, I also remember actually believing I heard reindeers on our roof top as a kid during Christmas. People often assume kids are either lying or saying what they really experienced, however kids can actually really believe something completely made up given the right trigger. It's not something that happens with just aliens. There's lots of cases of mass hysteria in schools for all sorts of stuff, like kids randomly falling down and having seizures for no reason after some kid started it, or satanic panic shit, or ghosts, etc. Google "school mass hysteria", you will find many cases like that (none to do with aliens, but they share similar features).
I don’t think it’s particularly significant that most of the reported cases are in the US.
It's significant because it's mostly a manifestation of certain social attitudes more so than it is something actually weird that people see.
I don't buy the "mass hysteria" hypothesis for Ariel school. Some of the school children have been interviewed as adults and they still stick by the story. They all look like regular neurotypical people that don't seem prone to fantasy, not sure why they would keep sticking to the story it was just a child's imagination going wild.
Some of the school children have been interviewed as adults and they still stick by the story
This is not weird. I kept believing my reindeers on the rooftop story until I realized Santa Clause doesn't exist, which was a few years after.
They all look like regular neurotypical people that don’t seem prone to fantasy, not sure why they would keep sticking to the story it was just a child’s imagination going wild.
Because it was reinforced by other people. You don't have to be neurodivergent. Many if not most perfectly neurotypical people have a false memory or two from childhood, if not more.
They all report it as being a very shocking and profound event in their lives, I just don't think that can really happen while imagining things on a playground.
Do you have any examples of mass hysteria that have such lasting effects?
How lasting it is depends on how they proceeded to cope with it and what the experience was treated as by their surrounding so I can't tell you for sure. However here's one case from South Africa: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277864567_Mass_hysteria_among_South_African_primary_school
Or a famous case in Malaysia: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-36069636
And another article talking about this: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/nov/14/was-ripon-school-gripped-by-mass-psychogenic-illness
The problem I have with the "mass hysteria" explanations is you don't really leave room for anything else, it can always serve as the go to explanation without putting too much thought into it. It kinda sounds lazy tbh. You can even say the pilots that are now appearing on the news were suffering from a collective delusion or something. It just completely negates the validity of eye witness testimony by default.
Also most mass hysteria cases have to do with a seemingly mysterious disease spreading and people feeling actual physical pain, not aliens.
Most reports you personally hear about come from the US. You won't be able to get an easy overview of the entire dataset by doing a few google searches, you need to dig into this stuff a bit.
I've done the digging, it's US everywhere lol. It's not that they don't exist from other countries, its just that like half of them conservatively speaking are from the US, when the US only has 300 million people or so. You also don't see nearly as many UFO hunters or whatever elsewhere.
There are plenty of prominent cases that resist trivial debunking that are outside of the US, like the Ariel school incident or the Belgian UFO wave for example. I don't think it's particularly significant that most of the reported cases are in the US. The phenomenon is clearly worldwide.
Also if it is ET it would make sense they'd pay special attention to the US considering it's the current hegemon.
The Belgian sighting has no significant differences to many other supposed sightings that have been debunked over and over. Something unusual happens, then it gets some attention, and then a million people get convinced they saw something odd because it's not hard to convince yourself you are seeing something odd by looking at the sky. Hell, a bunch of people often confuse the planet Venus for a UFO, because it is often close to the horizon and really bright. It's really not hard at all to get thousands and thousands of "sightings" after aggressively reporting on supposed UFOs. I remember when I was a little kid and I had seen some alien movie or whatever and in the following days I saw an oddly placed street lamp on some hill which I thought was a UFO, until I saw it again the next day and figured out what it was. The Ariel school thing happened to primary school children. I can't be sure exactly what it was of course but again, children are susceptible to mass hysteria especially in stressful environments and conditions, as well as really honestly believing that something which didn't happen to them actually did. Again, I also remember actually believing I heard reindeers on our roof top as a kid during Christmas. People often assume kids are either lying or saying what they really experienced, however kids can actually really believe something completely made up given the right trigger. It's not something that happens with just aliens. There's lots of cases of mass hysteria in schools for all sorts of stuff, like kids randomly falling down and having seizures for no reason after some kid started it, or satanic panic shit, or ghosts, etc. Google "school mass hysteria", you will find many cases like that (none to do with aliens, but they share similar features).
It's significant because it's mostly a manifestation of certain social attitudes more so than it is something actually weird that people see.
I don't buy the "mass hysteria" hypothesis for Ariel school. Some of the school children have been interviewed as adults and they still stick by the story. They all look like regular neurotypical people that don't seem prone to fantasy, not sure why they would keep sticking to the story it was just a child's imagination going wild.
This is not weird. I kept believing my reindeers on the rooftop story until I realized Santa Clause doesn't exist, which was a few years after.
Because it was reinforced by other people. You don't have to be neurodivergent. Many if not most perfectly neurotypical people have a false memory or two from childhood, if not more.
They all report it as being a very shocking and profound event in their lives, I just don't think that can really happen while imagining things on a playground.
Do you have any examples of mass hysteria that have such lasting effects?
How lasting it is depends on how they proceeded to cope with it and what the experience was treated as by their surrounding so I can't tell you for sure. However here's one case from South Africa: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277864567_Mass_hysteria_among_South_African_primary_school
Or a famous case in Malaysia: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-36069636
And another article talking about this: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/nov/14/was-ripon-school-gripped-by-mass-psychogenic-illness
The problem I have with the "mass hysteria" explanations is you don't really leave room for anything else, it can always serve as the go to explanation without putting too much thought into it. It kinda sounds lazy tbh. You can even say the pilots that are now appearing on the news were suffering from a collective delusion or something. It just completely negates the validity of eye witness testimony by default.
Also most mass hysteria cases have to do with a seemingly mysterious disease spreading and people feeling actual physical pain, not aliens.