We Shall Know Them By Their Fruits

For those of you not personally acquainted with me, I’m coming clean: I’m a bit of a nerd. No, really, don’t look so shocked, it’s true. Case in point - I like sci-fi. I’m not just talking Star Wars* or Star Trek, my sci-fi doesn’t have to include spaceships and laser blasters, it can be near-future or historical or parallel universe, doesn’t matter. I like Captain Nemo just as much as I like John Connor or Flash Gordon. It’s all good, and sometimes I like my sci-fi best when it’s ludicrous yet takes its premise a bit too seriously. Think Pitch Black or Mansquito.
   One thing’s always bothered me, though. The aliens in sci-fi are either completely benevolent – the grays from CE3K** - or out to kill every last human being on the planet – the bugs from Starship Troopers. I think that should we ever meet real extra terrestrials the truth is going to be a bit muddier than we’d like it. I think they’d have mixed motives and mixed emotions about meeting us. I mean, let’s face it, we’re kind of a filthy species, any aliens we meet are going to want a lot of hand sanitizer. Or tentacle sanitizer. Or three-lobed appendage sanitizer. Whatever, you get the idea.
   So I thought there might be a quick way to use our own culture to tell whether an alien species are good guys or bad guys. We lay it all out for them, one-hundred-fifty channels of cable, all the People magazine they can stomach, enough internet to choke a horse, block parties, gangster rap, the whole enchilada. When we see which of our creations has caught their eye – compound or laser-blasting – then we can determine their intentions.

Aliens will be good guys if:
   They love Adam West’s Batman.
   Their spaceships look like what people in the 50’s thought spaceships would look like.
   They like dogs, and dogs like them back.
   They think Citizen Kane was a fine bit of cinema indeed.
   They're horrible at basketball but they still want to play.

Aliens will be bad guys when:
   They agree with anything espoused on Fox ‘News.’
   They like broccoli.
   They think toll roads are a good idea.
   They harvest us for our tasty organs.
   They like Jar Jar Binks. Or, God help us, they look and act like Jar Jar Binks.
   They start wearing hipster fedoras like a bunch of tentacled douchebags.

Aliens will be hopeless wrecks and want to sleep on our couches and eat our groceries and never get a real job if:
   They like Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
   They wax rhapsodic over the ouvre of Keanu Reeves.
   They believe that such a thing as Highlander 2 ever existed. Which it did not.
   They think cosplay is anything but a colossal waste of time and energy.
   They like pineapple on pizza.


* Only the first three movies, the last three abominations don’t exist in my space/time continuum
** Nerd shorthand. No, I’m not going to translate for you.