Reminds me of the first story in The Martian Chronicles. When the first human astronauts arrive on Mars and go and knock on the doors of the Martian houses the Martians aren’t the least bit interested in this historical occasion and just shut their doors, leaving the astronauts wondering why the Martians aren’t impressed.

Until we have physical, undeniable evidence it is all just words. But, the reason I talk out load when I’m alone is for the aliens who might be watching me. I want them to hear my explanations for why I’m worth visiting personally / why I’m reading memes and not building a star gate out a 7 toasters and a mountain bike.

“You want to… leave the planet? With aliens you just met?”

Listen, the bar is pretty low. I’ll take my chances and will probably be fine with pretty much anything that isn’t prolonged neglect/indifference or intentional torture. If you make contact after interstellar travel I’m just gonna assume you’re cool and got things covered. And if nothing else you could probably put my brain in a roomba so I can weld in space or something.

TL;DR it don’t matter, none of this matters.

Now would be the absolute best time to announce contact with aliens, if it already exists, since it’s just par for the course at this point. It’d be just another Thursday. We’d start seeing rule42 art pop up before the day was through (granted there’s already plenty out there, but rule42 specifically for whatever the real aliens looked like.

Up above aliens hover Making home movies for the folks back home Of all these creatures who lock up their spirits Drill holes in themselves and live for their secrets

Honestly the scariest thing about first contact is if absolutely nothing changes.