If we see similar amplifier media events this week, we could get a sharp ⬆️. I think that’s unlikely now that high-reach shows like Rogan’s have already covered it. Still, low- to mid-tier outlets like NewsNation or local Fox stations could draw more attention to Loeb’s anomalies and the alien frame.

Let's remember that the two biggest spikes in attention to 3I/ATLAS and Avi Loeb’s “anomalies” came from an amplifier event: Joe Rogan's interview with Loeb.

Oct 21 – Loeb announces he’ll appear on Joe Rogan.

Oct 28–29 – The show airs on the 28th, and the peak in anomaly talk hits on the 29th.

3I/ATLAS is going to make its closest approach to Earth on December 19th.

I expect our media to give more attention to 3I/ATLAS and Loeb to receive more media attention this week.

Although the recent volume is low, depending on the media coverage this week, we could see higher volumes soon.

Read Bayar's recent blog post, "Alien of the gaps: How 3I/ATLAS was turned into a spaceship online," on the @cip.uw.edu website: www.cip.uw.edu/2025/12/03/3...

Scientists help society reason under uncertainty, but speculative framing travels farther and faster than caveats. If we want better collective sensemaking about space and what space entails, we need to reward careful context as much as we reward captivating conjecture.

A healthier norm is possible: keep curiosity high, keep claims proportional to evidence, and clearly mark the difference between an open question, a working hypothesis, and an extraordinary claim.

3I/ATLAS shows how our systems reward mystery: “maybe a probe, mystery deepens,” "stay tuned..." The alien of the gaps is as much a property of our platforms as of our own predispositions, and of the discreet charm of a revelation that never quite arrives.

In ~700k English posts on X about 3I/ATLAS, >260k mention at least one “anomaly” popularized in Loeb’s writing, and ~118k invoke an alien frame—about 40–45% of the anomaly-focused posts and roughly one in six posts overall. These are conservative estimates: they count only explicit references to 👽.

A big driver here is Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb. Through blog posts, interviews, and talks, he packaged 3I/ATLAS as a list of “anomalies” and repeatedly floated the idea that it could be alien tech. UFO/UAP communities online saw a ready-made script to work with.

While the scientific consensus is that #3I/ATLAS is a natural comet, one scientist's claims that the object shows certain anomalies that could indicate alien origins have ricocheted through the online universe, and these claims may be amplified as the comet passes Earth in mid-December. (3/3)

Analyzing posts on X, @mertcanbayar.bsky.social found that about 40% of the 3I/ATLAS conversations on on that platform invoked an aliens/ET frame. Bayar builds on the work of scholars including @katestarbird.bsky.social, who has written about how rumors travel within recognizable frames. (2/3)

The open-access article, "The end of trust and safety?: Examining the future of content moderation and upheavals in professional online safety efforts," is available in the Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...

The CIP researchers, Rachel Moran-Prestridge, @schafer.bsky.social, @mertcanbayar.bsky.social and @katestarbird.bsky.social, also examined current perspectives of content moderation and broader strategies for maintaining safe digital environments.