It’s actually a false dilemma. They’re real, but they’re non-human Earthlings living here in an environment we haven’t yet discovered or stumbled upon is the option few talk about, fits the full body of evidence better than any other explanation, and would prove most everyone wrong in different ways. So I bet that is what is going on.
Edit: it’s always funny that I get downvoted for just writing a theory out that is a pretty good one, as though you’re supposed to downvote people for this kind of post. People get really upset by this subject.
I don’t think anybody is upset by what you wrote, it just sounds like a nutty theory with no evidence, which doesn’t contribute to an informative discussion.
Lots of people in this thread are speculating about the plausibility of an ET hypothesis, which is far more nutty than what I wrote here. What I wrote here is unorthodox, but an ET hypothesis comparatively is absurd, particularly if you are going to entertain that based on the existing evidence. The existing evidence would not imply ET as much as another Earth species interacting with us. It also can imply that people are crazy or lying, of course, but I'm talking within the realm where we are going to speculate about ET.
I don't think it's a pretty good one. It sounds crazy. What do they eat? Where is any evidence of their existence and history? Where do they make their technology? Why is there no heat signature? Why not a single one ever tried to run away and expose them, or just got lost into our world?
Yeah I mean ultimately I can put forward falsifiable tests for most of these. My hypothesis is they are in a large void under one of the oceans, in physical pods. They don't eat solid food, but absorb a liquid diet. They probably do produce a heat signature, if we looked. I don't have a good explanation for the relative lack of evidence of their surface phase, but we do have some evidence that timelines around technological civilization are very off base. For your last point, I think most of them are not physically able to travel to the surface at all, and any instance of crashed manned UAPs (which imo, are no longer manned at all) may have explanations of the kind you state. But that's all been eliminated now - I would be surprised to find out we have any surface visitations by anything other than things which absolutely must be manned. (Of which I can speculate, but the null set is a possibility.)
Edit: it’s always funny that I get downvoted for just writing a theory out that is a pretty good one, as though you’re supposed to downvote people for this kind of post. People get really upset by this subject.