A few years ago, I was a UFO UpDate habitué, but came to rue the time spent visiting the archaically formatted web-site.
The host of UFO UpDates is a codger: Errol Bruce-Knapp. His site is a codger-site, where UFO geezers congregate and ruminate endlessly and nastily about UFOs, (mostly) past and present.
Also a few years ago, Bruce-Knapp established UpDates as a fee-oriented site. Apparently that effort has proved fruitless as the site is once again free for visitors.
Visitor input is set in a circa 1984 computer format that Facebook and Twitter users would find, as I do, infuriating and off-putting in the extreme.
But the main problem with UpDates is that, by catering to geezers, the content is overwhelmingly curmudgeonly; visitors back-stab and try to one-up each other, and eschew anything approaching diplomatic dialogue.
This includes UFO “celebs” such as Stanton Friedman and Jerry Clark.
Friedman is always defending himself against barbs from critics of his UFO work.
Clark damns and corrects content, while never or rarely addressing UFO sightings per se, even those he has championed in years past when he was a UFO researcher of note.
Clark has become the old-lady celebrity in a rocker at a nursing home for has-beens.
The other UpDate regulars are either sycophants (kissing the asses of the UFO celebs) or UFO skanks – persons with no real UFO acumen who want to be in the presence of the UFO old-timers who still have cachet among deluded UFO aficionados.
Yet, UpDates does provide an occasional nugget of UFO gold, and does spur lively, albeit often retrograde, information that UFO newbies might find interesting.
If Bruce-Knapp would bring UpDates into the 21st century, his site might be worth a visit from new, fresh UFO mavens.
But as it is, UpDates is an island populated by the dead or dying of ufology, and it has the smell of decay all over it.
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