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In December 2020, Twitter users enjoyed what appeared to be a delightfully weird coincidence when the author of an article debunking claims about alien life emerged as Hugh Mann. In a widely shared Dec. 14 tweet, @mmastrac included a screenshot of the article headlined, There is No Secret Underground Base on Mars, along with the author's name highlighted in red. @mmastrac added the caption, Nice try aliens: The screenshot was not digitally manipulated or faked and showed part of an article that appeared on the website Slate earlier in December 2020. However, the article itself was clearly intended to be humorous. All in all, the piece presented the author as an alien clumsily emphasizing their thoroughgoing humanness while desperately, and ineffectively, attempting to cover up evidence of alien life and operating under a blatantly fake pseudonym that sounds exactly like human: The joke may have been obvious to many readers and Twitter users, but the screenshot shared by @mmastrac didn't include the body of the article itself, which would have made it clearer. Even with the benefit of the full text of the piece, some readers appear to have mistaken Hugh Mann for a real Slate contributor and responded to the article in earnest. On the website News Break, which republished the Slate article, commenters wrote, There are numerous people who claim this that have served in the military just saying; Your [sic] a fucking reporter with no knowledge past the end of your pencil! its [sic] ignorant morons like you that keep the truth in the shadows; and This reporter is a [sic] asshat.
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