Why does all of this alien stuff take place mostly in the USA?
It occurred to me while reading about UFO whistleblower news. Why do the majority of UFO things occur in the United States rather than Russia, China, and other countries?
Edit: Thank you all for answers, they're really helpful.
USA is considerably new country and built with no distinctive, coherent ancient history and mythology. As such, its people often grab every opportunity to produce a mythology they can consider their own. It makes them perceive as unnatural/supernatural things we, citizens of old world rationalize, or brush off as of little value.
USA is an experiment by whatever the "aliens" are, so it's natural for them to supervise it with more interest than the rest of the world.
There are no aliens, it's just USA itself testing new technologies of theirs.
Other superpowers are very secretive by default and they simply hush-hush every sighting they can.
America is often the voice of media, being the home of, Hollywood, reality TV as well as the loudest voices on the internet it's natural that we perceive that to be the home of Alien stories.
Being a 'wealthy' country: often a higher employment rate leads to an increase in extra curricular hobbies. Countries with less time to focus on things other than work will also have less time to expand on other interests. This can have a spin off effect of increased time spent day dreaming about lights in the sky.
America is a very new country. There's lots of vast open nothingness to explore. Considered a 'frontier'. The concept of unexplored territory and unclaimed space of mystery is very much more engrained in American culture, unlike say anywhere in Europe where every square inch is claimed and has a city within an hour's drive. All that empty nothingness with strange lights on the horizon can lead to more mysterious musings of what they might be.
An small criticism about your third point is the fact that the world isn't the USA and Europe. There are many areas in the world with vast open areas. I do agree that in combination with the other factors it makes sense.
Because the major export product of the United States is American culture. UFO/alien abduction/government cover-ups are kinda baked into American popular culture at this point. Just the idea that the government is simultaneously incompetent yet able to successfully hide far reaching evidence of alien visitation is as American as baseball and apple pie.
I've no doubt people are looking up at the night sky all over the world and seeing things that they think are possibly alien craft. I've also no doubt that there are stories and folklore about abductions in every country on earth. But American culture is insidious and infects just about everything. This forces every other event to be reframed in reference to the American UFO phenomenon.
Sure, but we have a huge chunk of the country inhabited mostly by tumbleweeds and people with less-than-awesome education. Plus, the concept of Area 51 has been around so long and has been so prolific it's been constantly referenced in the mainstream, from Scooby-Doo to Tony Hawk's Pro Skater.
The real answer is that it doesn't; you simply hear about it more. The other superpowers who are flying super-sonic jets around all day are much more secretive and if you think the retribution is bad here let me tell you it is worse in China or Russia. Also, people see these things with their naked eye all the time. Seriously, drive out to the mid-west and just look at the sky at night. You will see them up there, making their 90 degree turns and all. But the stigma is really so bad within our culture that people just don't talk about it, and light pollution is so bad in the cities that you can't see the sky anywhere near one.
The short answer is that it doesn't. I think some of the most compelling cases I've seen have come out of South America, east Asia, and Europe.
The long answer (is really just speculation on my part) the US dumps so much money into defense that the citizens don't have healthcare, education, or decent social services. The USA is the richest nation on earth and many billions of dollars spent on defense are classified or unaccounted for. It seems likely to me that the US is one of the only nations with a program in place to study any recovered craft so any of our allies would likely send materials/craft to the US to be studied.
Here's a fun website that shows just how bonkers US military spending is compared to the rest of the world. Click the "Charts" tab under the maps for a clearer picture of what's going on. https://ourworldindata.org/military-personnel-spending
Yes some more instruction for the lazy. Go to charts then scroll over to the military expenditure. If you look through all the charts you'll see that the only other nation that rivals US military spending is China.
Usa's society is very susceptible to conspiracy theories in general, and the UFO story is one. The question, whether there are actually aliens or not, steps back behind the conspiracy accusation against government/secret services/etc.
This is an interesting point. I know the military pushed the narrative back in the 50s about UFOs to hide their military tech and it snowballed (successfully?) from there.
Does the Chinese populace have an attraction toward conspiracy theories or UFOs?
Possibly because the US defense industry dwarfs the rest of the world and is constantly testing new technology that can be confused for UFOs. Russia and China, while also having large defense industries, are nowhere near what the US spends.
I'd hesitate to say that beings capable of intergalactic travel couldn't easily cloak/hide themselves from our primitive technology. An ant can't, with all its sensory capabilities, tell that it's staring at a car even if its standing right in front of it.
Area 51 - a real USAF research facility where cutting edge aircraft were tested in the mid 20th century. People in the area truly did see Unidentified Flying Objects, in the sense that they saw aircraft the likes of which they had until then believed were impossible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Lazar who single-handedly reinvigorated the UFO conspiracy theories long after Area 51 had concluded most of its Cold War era secret tests.
If you pull back all the layers of this onion you will most likely find out its just humans manipulating a situation to fund secret projects and funnel money into private corporations.
It happens elsewhere as well but mostly under other different veils.
It's a cultural thing? Maybe there are a disproportionate number of alien believers in the US so they are more likely to attribute odd sightings to aliens.
Where I live, people believe supernatural stuff more than UFO stuff. So when they see something weird, the first thing in their mind would be ghosts instead of aliens.
Because it’s propaganda created by the US government. You should be asking yourself why is the government working so hard to distract you? What are they trying to hide? It’s not aliens I can promise you that much.
Also ask yourself this. If there is so much discussion and attention to aliens then why is it there is always zero evidence? Absolutely no evidence other then some strangers word.
Because it has become an almost normal thing now to assume alien ufos and conspiracies are real in the US. Reports of UFOs though have gone down since everyone has a phone camera though. You don't just have a single guy making a shitty 8mm film of a grainy blob of light.
Russia has a lot of mystical and conspiracy beliefs too. Likely a result of their history of authoritarian govs and religious beliefs.
I think its simply because we have a larger active military along with a freer media/speech. When you constantly have military jets in the air, ships on the sea, and satellites in space the chances of catching edge cases is just higher.
The US has Hollywood and the rest of the world watches our movies significantly more than we watch theirs. The country who makes the alien movie gets to decide where the aliens are going to make contact. We also have some of the loudest conspiracy theorists but that might just be a bias because I'm from here so obviously they're who I'd hear.
The "flying saucer" phenomenon originated among American and British pilots, from the "foo fighters" of WWII to Kenneth Arnold's widely publicized sightings. It then spread in the largely-American science-fiction scene and Hollywood-centric mass media.
Blame the science fiction magazines from the 50's and 60's. It really was a good time for scifi: Isaac Asimov, Arthur C Clarke, Kurt Vonnegut, Philip K Dick, Robert A Heinlein, Frank Herbert.
Generally others think aliens are probably already between us since we are not that special for being top specie on universe history. Considerig time is infinite, odds for that would be < 0.000...1
Interestingly, there's a strong argument that we are one of the first, at least locally.
Firstly, an infinite amount of time hasn't passed. Time actually started at the big bang (Asking what was before is akin to asking what is north of the north pole).
The big bang also didn't create any heavy elements, these required stars to produce. The first generation of stars could not have supported life. Later generations of star each have more heavy elements available. These allow for the formation of rocky planets. Our sun is in the earlier phase of this.
This leaves 2 questions. How long for life to evolve (all the way to technological intelligence)? And how easy is interstellar travel?
Life on earth seemed to pop up almost as soon as it could. That could be normal, or it could be us winning the lottery on the first play. As for evolution speed, we have no clue for comparison.
The 2nd is the critical one. As it stands, interstellar travel seems limited to the speed of light. This, and the cast energy requirements make interstellar travel and colonisation difficult. If a local species developed this ability, it is quite likely they reached us before now, and colonisated earth. The fact we can trace our evolution shows this likely didn't happen. The chances of such a species turning up in the window of time we are in, is almost zero. The fact we exist, without alien overseers is evidence we have won the race, at least locally.