As if aliens didn't have enough reason to hate us, we're about to start beaming ads to them!Humans! We're crunchy and go great with chips and salsa!

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We want our children to go to the planets. Burt Rutan 6/21/04
Tuckers! Science! Automotive Oddities! Boycott Trek XI! Building my hot rod with the help of the intarwebs Those who would delay scientific progress for a little temporary prosperity shall have neither.

As I said in the UT thread, that's just plain undignified.

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Rovers forever! - ToSeek
"The only way to explore the universe is to go and look." - Brian Cox
Well, the best way to find out is to go there and, find out. - Raven's Cry
'Evolution and science are one thing, but you don’t mess with Yoko Ono. Everybody knows that. ' - 386sx

I think we should send them the complete collection of Superbowl ads...that's give an alien civilization a good idea of what the human race is all about. pete

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A third rate theory forbids
A second rate theory explains after the fact
A first rate theory predicts...A. Lomonosov

And in a thousand years, they'll come looking for "the one you call MacNeil!"

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

The perfect solution to the impending overpopulation crisis.

"Soyelen Green is salsa! IT'S SALSAAAA!"

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

how about the Jay Leno Dorito Ads? "Eat all you want, We'll breed more."

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"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau

Who knows, maybe they will come here to stop at Apu's Kwik-E-Mart and get a bag of cool ranch flavored Doritos.

BTW, what's up with this new craze of beaming things into outer space as promos?? Is that really supposed to make me want to buy something??

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Show me the money
_

It gets the ads mentioned in the Newstainment media. "Free" advertising here on Earth-- or at least cheaper than the conventional distribution of ads.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Given the tragicomic nature of humanity, and the almost-certain inscrutability of alien minds, I can't imagine why a Doritos ad would be any worse of a first contact message than anything else we might send.

Indeed, it might have the benefit of being more honest about who and what we are as a species.

Imagine the holocaust that could result if aliens took seriously our messages about peace and rationality and whatnot, made the journey to our homeworld, and then saw what we're really like when nobody's watching.

Anybody who decided to visit us on the strength of the Voyager Record might be greatly disappointed by what they found when they arrived.

Anybody who decides to visit based on a Doritos commercial would probably be much more inclined to overlook our shortcomings in favor of paying handsomely for bags of artificially-flavored corn chips.

Great, then they'll think we are the Ferengi. We'll be a stereotyped monoculture to them.

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"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau

I can only imagine how much of a nose-dive our interest in ETI would take if our first message were the extraterrestrial equivalent of "Zootrin-Ohs are teh best!!LOLZ!!1ONE"

Then again, at least we'd know we share common ground.

(tongue firmly in-cheek)

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"He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River."

--Anonymous

Our species is not limited to Western pop-culture. In fact, that proportion is in the minority.

You humans do not give yourselves enough credit. You are the people of Voyager more than the people of Doritos. This I have seen. There are problems, but you are brave and smart and capable.

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Rovers forever! - ToSeek
"The only way to explore the universe is to go and look." - Brian Cox
Well, the best way to find out is to go there and, find out. - Raven's Cry
'Evolution and science are one thing, but you don’t mess with Yoko Ono. Everybody knows that. ' - 386sx

Sales are not limited to the West. Nearly every civilization has a marketplace.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Why do the opinions of hypothetical aliens matter again? Especially about trivial cultural phenomena that don't effect them?

On the other hand, if they do want to buy doritos... :-P

Sort of isomorphic, IMO, to the opinion of someone I knew in college (from another country). He opined that the angels were offended at women going about with their hair uncovered, especially in church, since they were created subordinate to men. My initial reaction was: even within the framework of your mythology, so what? They can be offended. It doesn't have diddly squat to do with them.

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http://amssolarempire.blogspot.com

I wasn't commenting about a marketplace, rather specifically about the Doritos ad (as was the posted I quoted), which is a byproduct of mass, Western-style consumerist culture. The implication was that that culture was representative of the species as a whole.

Perhaps I read too much into it, but I do get peeved when people, usually from Western liberal democracies, take it upon themselves to make blanket statements about humanity as a whole, as if no other cultures exist or aren't important enough to worry about.

The Dorito ad is just an outgrowth of the traditional vendor's call heard echoing through any souk, bazaar or zocalo. Such advertising goes back to the beginnings of civilization.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

The reason why the 'western' consumerist culture does so flipping well, is because, it's not just a product of western society. After about a generation and some of being indoctrinated in that the west was bad, once glasnost started, and people starting getting western consumer products thrown at them in the formally communist countries, were they all "Oh no, this is bad, it is not part of our culture."? No, they WANTED the stuff. The only reason the west is 'consumerist' is because it is affluent enough to GET pretty much anything. There is no Rousseau's noble savages out there, un-'tainted' by western society, we are ALL greedy son-of-a-guns. It's just in the west, and in other cultures like japan, and to the upper strata, china and other parts of the world,WHERE WE CAN GET WHAT WE WANT.
That is not to say this is a good thing, just saying it ain't exclusively a western thing.

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ravens_cry, you're overreacting. I have nothing against western consumerist culture, hell I'm one of them(!) and wouldn't have it any other way. But there are other cultures which live (or lived) perfectly happily without any contact with the western world and simply weren't materialistic - they moved from place to place, leading a nomadic lifestyle. And between these two extremes there is a continuum of variation.