Your Ring camera is not only going to be the source of an Amazon-fueled Big Brother dystopia—it may also capture evidence of extraterrestrial life. On the off chance that you record an alien being on your Ring camera, the tech company is willing to pay you for it. The scheme is billed as Ring’s Million Dollar Search for Extraterrestrials. Entrants are encouraged to keep their eyes peeled for any sign of alien life recorded by their Ring doorbell cameras. If a little green being walks into the camera’s purview, then the winner of the best “scientific evidence” will receive $1 million with meteorologist and astrobiologist Jacob Haqq Misrad serving as a judge for the contest. Those who live outside alien country can still enter to win a $500 Amazon gift card by filming their own alien Ring footage using makeup, props, and costumes but let’s face it, that’s the coward’s way out. Submissions are being accepted until November 3.“Sensors have been picking up rogue signals from the Neighborhood Nebula. Might be nothing. Might be something. That’s where you come in,” Amazon wrote on the contest’s website. Entrants must download the footage from their Ring app to be considered for the prize money.The competition comes as UFOs and aliens more broadly are top-of-mind across the world...for some reason. In September, journalist and UFO-obsessive Jaime Maussan presented Mexico’s congress with two mummified bodies that he claims are of non-human origin. The two bodies, contained in hilariously oversized coffins, were apparently found in Peru and analyzed by Mexico’s National Autonomous University using carbon dating methods. They were also total bullshit. At the same time, NASA appointed a director of UFO research after completing a nearly year-long investigation into unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs. Ring, meanwhile, could be leveraging the UFO hysteria as a cheeky bid to convince customers that it is not a privacy nightmare. Politico revealed in a report this March that the company handed over a full day’s worth of Ring footage without the consent of the customer using it. The customer previously complied with law enforcement’s request for footage from his doorbell during an investigation of his neighbor, but that same law enforcement used the court system to obtain even more. In many major cities, law enforcement officers have access to a special portal through which they can request Ring footage from the gadget’s massive network of devices.
