Videos went viral on New Year’s Day after a brawl between young people in Miami led to a massive police response, with dozens of cop cars filmed from above and shared on websites like Instagram and X, formerly known as Twitter. But those same videos have taken on a new life online in the past 24 hours, with some claiming they actually show police responding to alien creatures, despite there being no evidence anything extraterrestrial was happening.
“10ft Aliens/Creatures (caught on camera?) fired at inside and outside Miami Mall, media silent, cops are covering it up saying kids were fighting with fireworks, yet all these cop cars, & air traffic stopped that night except for black military choppers…and no media coverage,” one account on X claimed.
That account, known as GoodLionTV, has racked up over 3.5 million views alone for its outrages claims. GoodLionTV has a blue “verification” checkmark, but just because an account has a checkmark, that doesn’t mean it’s a reliable source of information.
The so-called “aliens” supposedly captured on camera are just shadows, according to the Miami police, which spoke to TMZ about the conspiracy theory after it went viral on Friday.
"What is seen on this clip is the shadow of someone walking. If you look at the bottom of the shadow, you can see the person. No creature,” an unnamed spokesperson for the Miami PD told TMZ.
But that hasn’t stopped a lot of verified accounts on X from claiming there must be some other-worldly explanation for the police response. X no longer verifies the identity of any user who pays $8 for a checkmark, but many users still assume people with a checkmark must be more reliable sources of information than the average person.
Some of the videos have been altered to show them “close up” in a way that suggests they’re being given digital artifacts or zoomed in through a manner that causes people to see things that aren’t there. Ironically enough, zooming in on videos can give us less clarity about what’s actually happening because our brain compensates for pixelation by looking for patterns.
As local TV station WPLG-TV reported at the time, the fight at Bayside Marketplace in Miami started after teenagers were setting off fireworks in the mall and causing a lot of panic. As many as 50 young people were involved in the disturbance, which left many onlookers worried about what was happening. That concern prompted a large police presence, as you can see by the countless videos on social media. Four juveniles were arrested, according to WPLG-TV.
But there’s no evidence anything about the disturbance had to do with aliens, reptilians or anything else supernatural.
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