Latest / Journey to the Fringe / Miami Mall Aliens: Panic at the Bayside

Transcript

Miami Mall Aliens: Panic at the Bayside · Journey to the Fringe

0:03
From the unexplained to the mundane, come join
0:06
us on a journey to the fringe. Hello and welcome
0:15
to Journey to the Fringe. And despite what we
0:18
like to talk about, we're not a royal podcast.
0:21
We do weird fringe stuff, mostly. Chelsea, please
0:24
back me up on this. You did this episode. Yeah,
0:26
no, it's true. And now we're going to be talking
0:29
about the royals. damn it as we love to talk
0:35
about okay i might as well just start the episode
0:41
here so that taylor's not wrong or right i forgot
0:46
what he said That went on for too long. Okay,
0:53
this episode is dedicated to myself because I
0:57
heard so much not stuff about this one. And I
1:00
had no idea what everyone was talking about.
1:02
So I decided to find out. And while I was finding
1:05
out, I just decided to write my research down
1:07
for you. Okay, and I really hope it's not Bigfoot
1:10
penis. I'm really hoping so too because I wrote
1:13
this so long ago. It's going to be so awkward
1:19
if I did write it about Bigfoot. You never know.
1:22
You never know. I feel like it would leave an
1:25
imprint on your mind, but who knows? You never
1:28
know with me. With that being said, I'm going
1:31
to take you all back in time to New Year's Day
1:35
2024. And the location is downtown Miami at the
1:42
Bayside Market place. No way. Are you doing that
1:44
mall? Yeah, I'm doing the mall. Nice. It's a
1:48
shopping mall. That's one of those things that
1:50
I've been meaning to go back to. On the night
1:54
in question, or the night that we've just traveled
1:57
to, dozens of officers were called around. Those
2:02
are police officers. They were called to the
2:05
Bayside Marketplace around 8 .30 p .m. local
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time to the two -story mall at 401 Biscayne Boulevard
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after several people called 911 to report what
2:18
some people were reporting as gunshots. Police
2:21
cars occupied the boulevard and temporarily blocked
2:24
access between 2nd and 4th streets. These are
2:28
the facts. Everyone can agree on these. But what
2:32
exactly prompted this huge police response? Well,
2:36
that depends on who you ask. While the official
2:39
story evolved, more on that later, the official
2:43
official story ends up being on a fight involving
2:47
a group of teenagers who were throwing fireworks
2:50
at each other in the open -air shopping mall.
2:52
Not super common, but also not unexpected from
2:56
teenagers. It's true. expect the unexpected from
3:00
them as they say i don't think they say that
3:03
i made that up but you could expect the unexpected
3:06
from them these four teenagers were arrested
3:09
in connection to the incident as reported by
3:12
local wplg tv according to the suspects arrest
3:17
reports mentioned in several sources the juveniles
3:21
were causing a riot inside the mall and causing
3:24
panic According to theorists, the incident on
3:28
January 1st, 2024 did not begin with teenagers.
3:32
No, it began with an anomaly. Some accounts claim
3:36
a mysterious individual on the ground floor of
3:40
the Bayside Marketplace activated a strange box
3:43
-like machine. Others believe a rift or portal
3:48
simply tore open in the middle of the crowded
3:50
mall without warning. Here we have some headlines.
4:09
And here's another one. On January 1st, 2024,
4:13
a mall in Miami saw one of the biggest police
4:16
responses in history. We still do not have any
4:19
evidence, records, or testimonies to tell what
4:23
actually happened inside, though the police claimed
4:26
it was teenagers fighting. Which, to be fair,
4:30
I don't think you'd need testimonies for that.
4:33
Yeah, because they fight. Right? They just do
4:36
that. Is that what you're saying? And yeah, there's
4:37
more fireworks involved, but like, it's not that
4:40
big of a deal if it's teenagers fighting. Yeah.
4:42
Of everyone you would expect to be fighting in
4:45
a mall, it would be teenagers. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
4:48
Okay, good. We're on the same page. We're on
4:50
the same page on this. So, there's the anomaly.
4:55
And from this anomaly, whichever anomaly you
4:59
may choose, emerges shadow aliens. Like, Like
5:04
shadow people? No, not quite. Okay. I wouldn't
5:07
exactly call them shadow people. They're shadow
5:10
aliens. These entities were described as bipedal
5:14
humanoids standing anywhere from 8 to 12 feet
5:17
tall, so very tall, and they possessed elongated
5:21
limbs, unnatural proportions, and they moved
5:24
by gliding rather than walking. Witnesses allegedly
5:28
described them as being made out of a dark, smoky,
5:31
or shadow -like substance, with some claiming
5:34
they had glowing orb -like eyes. Other witnesses
5:37
are noted as saying the creatures were blending
5:40
in with the crowd, even though it was very tall
5:43
and that it was a gray -silver color. I love
5:46
that they're just like so obnoxiously tall, but
5:49
blending, like they're trying to blend in. I
5:52
kind of feel almost like it's an episode of Invader
5:55
Zim. Yes. It's like the best show ever. Yeah.
5:58
And they just put on like a hat. Yeah. And nobody
6:02
like nobody except that one weird kid in the
6:05
class. And they're just like normal looking to
6:11
everybody else. So they weren't attacking people,
6:14
but their sheer presence and reality bending
6:17
appearance induced immediate primal terror. And
6:22
that's where everybody stampeded out of the mall.
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Obviously, panic ensues by the stampeding and
6:29
the resulting stampede. I've just said stampede
6:32
so many times in the last minute. It was not
6:37
caused by teenagers with fireworks, even though
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we would expect teenagers to be doing that, but
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by hundreds of people fleeing in absolute panic
6:46
from these towering aliens. Because this was
6:49
an interdimensional breach, the government's
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response was instantaneous and overwhelming.
6:56
And the Miami Police Department's Citywide 3
6:59
Alert was actually a coordinated military -style
7:02
contamination protocol. Hundreds of heavily armed
7:06
officers, tactical units, and helicopters descended
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on the mall. A response theorists argue is completely
7:13
disproportionate for a fistfight among kids.
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I think they left out the fireworks. but exactly
7:19
what you would expect for shadow aliens. The
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whole thing is captured only by aerial drone
7:26
and helicopter footage as a gray creature is
7:29
spotted in this footage walking in between the
7:32
police cars in the building. Have you seen this
7:35
footage? I have not, no. Okay, well maybe we
7:38
should just pull it up so that you at least can
7:41
see it. Okay. Oh yeah, they're showing it. See
7:44
the finger? Right there. There's the alien. Yeah.
7:49
There it goes. Huh. Weird. I couldn't tell you,
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but there's a weird mist in front of the lights.
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There is. I'm not gonna lie. Okay, let's go back.
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How do I stop? It definitely is weird. But am
8:03
I gonna say is it, like, super out of the ordinary?
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Maybe? I don't know. It's hard to say. It's really
8:11
far away, the footage. Yeah, this is from like
8:14
a helicopter or drone or something. So it's like
8:17
to describe to everyone what we're seeing, it's
8:20
helicopter drone footage. That's pretty great.
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I hope that clears things up. So the most critical
8:27
part of this theory explains the lack of high
8:31
definition evidence, obviously. Yeah, because
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this is recent enough that there should be some
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type of body cam on the police, correct? Yeah.
8:41
Actually, I didn't even think about that. Oh,
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okay. Yeah, but there's nothing out there. I've
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looked at this. I haven't seen any body cam footage
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release. Theorists maintain that as shoppers
8:53
fled, government agents and police actively confiscated
8:57
cell phones and scrubbed videos before they could
8:59
be uploaded. They allege that local cell towers
9:03
were jammed to prevent live streaming and a media
9:06
blackout was enforced, grounding news helicopters
9:09
or forcing them to film from highly degraded
9:11
distances, which we saw in that video. footage
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but the weird thing is is that the police released
9:17
that footage right so they just i guess they
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didn't think there was anything in it then and
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i'm following the story of its aliens in there
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so they didn't i don't actually know if that
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is police or not but we're gonna take a closer
9:30
look at this footage in a second it might be
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police but it's of the police so yeah classic
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suppression of non -human entities a recurring
9:40
theme for researchers like lord Oh my god, I've
9:45
done it and it's not even his episode. Lloyd
9:47
Pye, who have long argued the establishment actively
9:51
hides evidence of alternative beings. Lloyd Pye.
9:56
I miss that guy. I know, me too. It wasn't even
9:59
that long ago. No. And you know what? I was editing
10:03
our episode that just came out, which again will
10:07
tell you how long our window is. And your mini
10:11
that we just did on the latest one was mentioning
10:13
Tulane University again. I can't even remember
10:18
what it is. I don't know why that comes up so
10:20
much. I didn't think it was that big of a university.
10:23
It's apparently a huge... That's minimum, the
10:26
third reference. We're going to need an episode
10:28
on Tulane University. We're just going to have
10:31
to do one just like Bigfoot penis, but it's going
10:34
to be Tulane University. Hold on. What was it
10:41
on? I have to look at it now. Oh, the New Orleans
10:43
one. Oh, no way. The research came out of Tulane
10:46
University. I know. Now I'll never forget it.
10:48
You know how many episodes it probably came up
10:50
on before that we just never noticed? Probably
10:52
so many that now that we're actively thinking
10:55
about it, we easily said three. I know. Okay.
10:59
So by the next morning, the cover -up finalized.
11:03
The authorities needed a plausible explanation
11:06
for why thousands of people ran screaming and
11:09
why the entire police force was mobilized. They
11:12
created the team brawl narrative, blaming the
11:15
chaos on 50 rowdy kids with sticks and fireworks.
11:19
When internet sleuths pointed out the towering
11:22
gray figures in the leaked aerial footage, the
11:25
police department deployed a psychological deflection,
11:28
claiming the 10 -foot aliens were simply the
11:31
stretched shadows of human officers walking together.
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For the conspiracy community, this explanation
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is nothing more than a textbook cover -up designed
11:41
to keep the public blind to the reality of interdimensional
11:45
visitors, obviously. The belief that aliens were
11:51
at the Miami mall was the result of a perfect
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storm of optical illusions. A massive police
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presence and the rapid spread of internet rumors
12:00
in an information vacuum. A story of our times.
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Let's take a closer look at what we have happening
12:09
here. The primary visual evidence fueling the
12:12
theory was aerial footage taken from news helicopters
12:16
and drones. The footage was shot at night from
12:19
a high altitude and heavily zoomed in. This is
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one of the only things you're going to see in
12:25
conjunction with this encounter that people are
12:28
going to point to. You're going to see no other
12:30
videos and they point to the fact that this has
12:33
all been wiped out and the tower Hours were jammed
12:35
and everything. There are videos of people rushing
12:38
out of the mall. Nothing to do with. Are there.
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I guess I should ask at this point. Okay. Is
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there any footage of like the fight that took
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place? No. Okay. No, there's no footage either
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way. So. take with that what you will in one
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specific clip people noticed a tall gray blurry
12:58
figure walking near the police cruisers because
13:01
of the pixelation the angle and the poor lighting
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it looked to some like an eight to ten foot tall
13:07
creature striding through the scene The Miami
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Police Department later clarified that the creature
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was actually a group of human police officers
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walking together. And the giant alien was just
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their combined shadow stretched across the pavement
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by the harsh police lights. And I'm going to
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show you that clip again, Taylor. Okay. Okay,
13:30
there. See, that one's kind of blurry. Yeah.
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Yeah, I can take or leave that one. This next
13:36
one, though, you can see three officers walking.
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Oh, yeah, you can. You can clearly see three
13:41
officers. You can clearly see three there. Yeah.
13:44
And like I said before, it's kind of misty or,
13:48
like, hazy. Yeah, it's just poor, poor footage.
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Don't read that. I can't end the stream fast
13:54
enough. So that's what we have to say about the
14:00
alien. People online could not understand why
14:03
a fight among teenagers would warrant such an
14:06
overwhelming police presence. See, as somebody
14:11
who has kind of a weird view of Americans, if
14:16
that many kids are in a fight in a mall, as a
14:20
police officer, if I were there, I would assume
14:22
they all have guns. I would think you'd want
14:26
a lot of backup. Yeah, I go back and forth on
14:29
this one. Yes, I do think that it was a crazy
14:32
police response. When you look at the video,
14:35
there's a ton of police officers. And, I mean,
14:39
we're Canadians, so I don't think it really warrants
14:42
it when... you know, we don't have the school
14:45
shootings or shootings in public places like
14:48
they do in the US, knock on wood. So I'm up on
14:51
the air on that where, you know, somebody calls
14:54
in that they heard shot and it's just people
14:56
evacuating from a large mall. Could be anything.
14:59
And fireworks do sound like guns. So I go back
15:03
and forth on it. I don't know. Does it warrant
15:06
the whole thing? Well, I don't know because things
15:08
like this seem to be happening more and more.
15:11
So maybe it does. warrant that huge response
15:14
now just being what the state of you know the
15:17
shootings happening in the u .s so often are
15:20
so when the initial 911 calls came in some people
15:23
mistook the sound of fireworks set off by the
15:26
teenagers for gunfire believing they were dealing
15:29
with an active mass shooting in a crowded outdoor
15:32
mall the police issued a citywide three alert
15:36
This emergency code mandates that every available
15:39
officer in the city immediately respond to the
15:42
location. The result was hundreds of heavily
15:44
armed officers and dozens of squad cars descending
15:47
on the mall at once. A scale of response that
15:51
Internet sleuths felt had to be for something
15:53
more significant than a brawl. And you know what's
15:57
funny? That the Internet at this time is like,
16:00
there's like... teenagers fighting with fireworks
16:03
that they think is a gun does not warrant this
16:06
response like yeah it does absolutely warrant
16:08
this response yep aliens like especially when
16:12
it's called in as 50 teenagers with guns being
16:15
fired yeah like an alien like materializing in
16:21
the middle of a mall like does it warrant that
16:23
response well maybe if the if everybody's freaking
16:26
out about it in the mall see I would feel like
16:29
local police is who's going to be there if there's
16:33
a 10 -foot -tall alien that materializes. That's
16:36
true. That's so true. And I don't think they'd
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be able to keep a lid on this story with it being
16:41
local police. Yeah, especially for that big of
16:45
a response. You'd be like, something's definitely
16:47
happening there. I agree with that. so the incident
16:51
happened late on new year's day so while local
16:55
news covered the brawl and the fireworks official
16:58
police statements breaking down the exact timeline
17:01
and refuting the alien rumors took several days
17:04
to materialize and in that silence from the police
17:08
the internet filled in the gaps and we also saw
17:11
the narrative change on the news outlets as well
17:14
because of this lack of acknowledgement from
17:17
the police they were putting out different theories
17:20
so it kind of kept changing with news outlets
17:23
and then you get all these internet people putting
17:26
stuff out and so you kind of get this perfect
17:29
storm of information out there which just fuels
17:34
the fire with conspiracy theorists without a
17:38
clear immediate official narrative speculation
17:40
runs wild This all seemingly comes from an account
17:45
on X which promotes red pill cinema This is all
17:49
the conspiracy speculation Red pill cinema is
17:53
a concept taking from the matrix having come
17:56
to represent especially within alt -right communities
17:58
the willingness to learn and potentially unsettling
18:02
truth So this user on X claims the footage showed
18:06
10 -foot alien creatures caught on camera, which
18:10
were fired at inside and outside Miami Mall.
18:13
The post reached just about 100 ,000 views on
18:17
the social media platform, showing the impact
18:19
of the theory. Another post on X that claimed
18:23
authorities weren't telling people, quote, the
18:25
truth about why Miami had possibly the biggest
18:28
police response I've ever seen in my life, end
18:31
quote, received 7 .7 million views as of early
18:35
on Friday. I don't know what Friday they're posting
18:38
on. Surely it's not this Friday because it's
18:41
not Friday today. Once the initial shadow alien
18:47
video hit TikTok and X, I'm not saying formerly
18:51
Twitter. Like, why does everyone always say that?
18:53
Just call it Twitter. It's easier. Yeah, yeah.
18:56
and Twitter, algorithmic amplification took over.
19:00
To make the story more compelling, users began
19:03
inventing supporting details that were entirely
19:06
fabricated, such as confiscated phones. Rumors
19:11
spread that police were forcing witnesses to
19:13
delete footage from their phones, which conveniently
19:15
explained why there were no close -up, high -quality
19:18
videos of the supposed alien. I gotta say, that
19:21
one's... believable everyone has a phone these
19:24
days everyone's always videotaping things the
19:27
military blackout false claims circulated that
19:31
military helicopters were deployed that the cell
19:34
networks were jammed and that flights were grounded
19:36
at nearby miami international airport to contain
19:39
the situation and accounts claim that anyone
19:43
who saw the creature was forced by the government
19:46
to sign a non -disclosure agreement or face consequences
19:50
Because these claims played into established
19:52
tropes of government UFO cover -ups, they were
19:55
readily accepted by communities already primed
19:59
to believe in extraterrestrial encounters. And
20:02
just so you know, the Miami police are sticking
20:05
with their story. They said that two of the male
20:09
teenagers arrested age 15 are facing charges
20:13
of burglary, third degree grand theft, battery
20:16
and resisting an officer without violence. The
20:19
two other arrested teens age 14 and 16 were charged
20:23
with resisting an officer without violence. The
20:26
teen's arrest report said police were escorting
20:29
50 juveniles out of the Miami. mall when they
20:32
spotted another 15 juveniles beating up a driver
20:35
and ordered them to stop the teens ran away and
20:38
were eventually stopped by police in the parking
20:41
garage and the miami police reported the incident
20:44
does not mention the presence of any unidentified
20:47
creature corresponding to the claims made online
20:50
but you wouldn't expect it to that is my miami
20:56
bayside market alien encounter I was a little
21:01
disappointed by this. There was nothing to grab
21:04
onto with it. Yeah, it sounds like literally
21:07
it was just somebody saw it online and it spread
21:09
that way. There's no first -hand accounts, despite
21:12
the fact thousands of people were involved in
21:14
it. There were arrests of people involved in
21:17
the fight. It is weird it's such a small amount
21:19
from the fight, but nonetheless, they have recordings
21:23
of people calling in the fight and... It literally
21:28
just seems like it's from the helicopter thing.
21:30
And the news, unfortunately, was a big part of
21:34
it spreading. It was. I think it was just the
21:37
lack of, you know, it was holidays and stuff
21:40
like that. And, you know, I hate to present you
21:44
with something as disappointing as this, but
21:46
I was curious. I know you guys are probably curious.
21:50
Maybe you heard something about it in passing.
21:53
That's where I heard it from. And I was like,
21:55
I wonder if there's anything to this. And I never
21:57
heard anything more. And you kind of got to worry
22:00
sometimes when you never hear anything more.
22:03
but we get so much information in our faces every
22:06
day sometimes it's hard to hear more so i thought
22:09
i'd look into this for you guys and there's nothing
22:12
here in my opinion that's even the least bit
22:15
interesting unfortunately you know there's a
22:19
lot of way more interesting conspiracy theories
22:22
out there i'll give you one just off the top
22:24
of my head like serpo Like, that has a backstory.
22:28
There's some creativity in Serpo. You gotta give
22:31
it to Rick for that one. Some great creativity.
22:36
That's what I'm looking for. In a story that
22:39
I want to hear about. And this just did not have
22:43
it. And I also think. That it's just a sign of
22:46
the age. It was just like TikTok. Yeah this almost
22:50
reminds me. Of the mud flood episode we had to
22:52
do. Oh yeah. It's such a neat idea. And there's
22:57
such little thought process. Put into it. It's
23:00
almost like this younger generation. That is.
23:04
just grown up with this technology and they just
23:06
have no no creativity with the conspiracy theories
23:10
you guys need to like give us something you gotta
23:13
go to the second level yeah like this is like
23:16
think about the implications of it think of the
23:20
implications of what you're telling us and like
23:22
what that brings Yeah, and this is why you guys
23:26
are not going to have any Bill Moores and Richard
23:28
Dodies or, like, any great assholes in the UFO
23:32
community. Yeah, they are, but they're going
23:35
to be so much lazier. They're going to be so
23:37
much lazier. Yeah. But that's, like, everything
23:41
right now. It's the same thing, but lazier, it
23:44
seems. This really just strikes me as a lazy
23:48
something. I don't even know what to call this.
23:53
I'm leaving you disappointed and we got to report
23:57
it. Just like we got to report the penises, we
24:00
got to report the shitty alien encounters because
24:04
you got to know about it. You do. You got to
24:07
know about the shitty stuff that does not help
24:09
in any way. It's important. They're the vegetables
24:12
of the UFO and fringe community. Yeah. Sad to
24:16
say, but... And we all know nobody's getting
24:20
enough vegetables right now. Yeah. but yeah you
24:24
know i think that's a good spot and that analogy
24:26
i guess i have been taylor here with chelsea
24:29
we are journey to the fringe thank you all for
24:31
listening and we'll see you next week bye thank
24:34
you for listening to journey to the fringe if
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episode.