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Comment by rococode | Hacker News Reader

We've really gotta adopt a new term for this stuff. It's fine to be pedantic and say "well 'UFO' doesn't actually mean aliens in the first place", but the acronym has clearly been co-opted by pop culture to be closely tied with aliens for decades now. Even a minor change like "UFOB" (which has been used by the USAF officially) would probably make a big difference. People will continue to say UFO to mean aliens, and that's fine, but official press releases can use a different term so that people don't read the headlines and immediately think "wow, aliens!".

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Yes, the term now is UAP, unidentified aerial phenomenon. There is an official UAP Task Force in the Pentagon. Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid uses it, Hilary Clinton uses it.

"Ariel phenomenon" sounds like the kind of word that will be very quickly co-opted by paranormalists and occultists.

You can run as fast as you like on the Euphemism Treadmill, but you won't get anywhere.

The problem isn't with the term. Any term that means "An unknown flying thing" will come to be associated with aliens. If you start using a new term, that will just make it more exotic and interesting and "official seeming". "Authorities are reporting a UFT!" "What's that" "A UFO!!"

The interesting/curious/conspiracy-invoking concept is the unknown flying thing, whatever you call it. Whatever name you use will get associated with the interesting/curious/conspiracy aspect.

Yea, I don't understand why there can't be intelligible/non-conspiracy conversations about the extremely unusual stuff that has been reported by a good number of reputable people. It seems like there are a few plausible theories and we should be able to have conversations about wth they are.

You're suggesting the media use a new, accurate term to avoid the "wow, aliens" sensationalism and voluntarily lose out on page views/ad clicks? Cool, who do you think will go first?

It's in American Airline's benefit to make this story get as big as possible, it's free advertising. They already know the term will be misunderstood, that is their goal.

I feel like this “all press is good press” argument gets deployed a lot as a sort of thought-terminating cliche. I don’t think it’s obvious that AA necessarily benefits from a story that does involve them but could also potentially make some people more afraid of flying.

It gets their name on the front page places like here and probably some regular media coverage, it doesn't say anything bad about the company, and your worry that it could cause people not to fly requires them reading and internalizing the entire article. And all that was required of them was using a correct term for the event.

I think the all press is good press more applies to lesser known companies. At this point everyone knows who american airlines are.

e.g. boeing/United airlines after the engine failure

Would guess they both would prefer it if that wasn't in the news.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/euphemism_treadmill

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