In this video posted online, a YouTuber claiming to represent the hackers collective Anonymous said NASA will soon announce the discovery of "extraterrestrial life." (Anonymous/YouTube)

The headlines sound thrilling. One might say theybait a click.

ANONYMOUS SAYS NASA HAS EVIDENCE OF ALIEN LIFE. DOES IT? Newsweek

The world's biggest hacking group thinks NASAis about to announce alien life. the Independent

Maybe you know of Anonymous as a band of socially enlightened hackers: liberatorsof knowledgefrom elites whowant to hideit from the public. You certainly know what NASA is.

So you click.

And what you get, if you follow the articles to theamateur YouTube channel that is their source, is video of a man in a Guy Fawkes mask Anonymous Global, he calls himself reading out old quotes from NASA spokespeoplein a spooky, synthesized voice.

Theman in the anarchist mask quotes a NASA science director's testimony from a congressional hearing in April, all totally public: We are on the verge of making one of the most profound, unprecedented discoveries in history.

Thatquote taken out of context and adorned with Anonymous Global's wild conspiracy theorizing became the basis for millions of views and countless news articles, forcing the science director in question and NASA officialsto explicitly deny the claims of a shoddily produced YouTube video this week.

Theres no pending announcement regarding extraterrestrial life, a NASA spokesmanwrote to The Washington Post, in case you were still in doubt.

Anonymous Gobal's video doesn't show Thomas Zurbuchen's actualtestimony, in which the directortalked uprecent discoveries ofplanets around distant suns and organic chemicals on Saturn's moon but caveated that we haven't found definitivesigns of life just yet.

[The surprising places where Americans are running into UFOs, mapped]

Later in his12-minute video, between monetized ads, Anonymous Global runs out of quotes and just sits therein front ofrandom UFO footage, talking about analien protocol.

Well this was a whole lot of nothing, says one commenteramong the million-plus people who clicked.

Not to mention all the people who clicked onone of the many, many news headlines that played along withthe YouTuber's bait and switch.

Anonymous says NASAis on the verge of announcing the existence of extraterrestrial life, writes the Independent, citing a YouTube account affiliated with the hacking group.

In this instance, eventhe YouTuber calling himself Anonymous Global was more accuratethan the news. Anonymous is NOT a group or an organization, he notes, correctly, in a disclaimeron his channel.

[Mysterious light blazes across California sky, sparking confusion, excitement and fears of alien invasion]

As the New Yorker once wrote, Anonymous isnot an organization of hackers or anything else, but rather a shape-shifting subculture of anti-establishment Internet users.

It's an open-access brand, essentially, andanyone canclaim allegiance to it.

In the case of Anonymous Global, his YouTube history reveals that he started making videos about the flight simulator X-Plane, until a year ago, when he fully embraced the Anonymous brand.

Preceding hisviral aliens video fromlast week: Anonymous 10 Greatest Conspiracy Theories and Anonymous Some Thoughts on Christmas 2016.

But never mind.

HUMANS are about to discover alien life, NASAbelieves according to the latest video from hacktivist group Anonymous,says the Sun.

And it's not just theBritish tabloids which before breathlessly reporting on the Anonymous aliens video, werespotted lending credence tothe Breatharian movement, made up of people who claimthey don't needfood.

[If anything happens to me, investigate, UFO hunter texted mother. Days later, he was dead.]

Newsweek picked up the story, too, with that ALL-CAPS question headline: ANONYMOUS SAYS NASA HAS EVIDENCE OF ALIEN LIFE. DOES IT?

You have to read more than 200wordsinto the article to find out the answer: No, it does not.

Even Sputnik News, which is run by the Russian government and named after a satellitethat symbolizes itsspacerivalry with NASA,flirted with the notionthat U.S. government scientistsmight have beaten their Russian rivals to the biggest discovery in history.

Once you click through, though, theRussians quickly dispelsuch nonsense.

Just about anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of the dark Web can grab themselves a few minutes in the online limelight by releasing an announcement and crediting the story as being from Anonymous, Sputnik writes.

We all want the same outcome, certainly, but we'll stick with the peer-reviewed science, thanks.

Or sometimes just calling the agency a YouTuber claims to speak for can help.

While were excited about the latest findings from NASAs Kepler space observatory, theres no pending announcement regarding extraterrestrial life, a spokesman for the agency wrote to The Post on Monday.

For years NASA has expressed interest in searching for signs of life beyond Earth. We have a number of science missions that are moving forward with the goal of seeking signs of past and present life on Mars and ocean worlds in the outer solar system. While we do not yet have answers, we will continue to work to address the fundamental question, Are we alone?

So there it is. For themoment, the only confirmed intelligent life in the universe is human more intelligent some weeks than others.

This article has been updated with NASA's comments and the science director's rebuttal.

NASA's Thomas Zurbuchen testified before the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology on the advances in the search for life on April 26. (House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology)

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No, NASA didn't find life on Saturn's moon. But deep sea life on Earth is pretty alien.

Read the original here:

A ridiculous YouTube video claiming we found aliens kept making the news, so NASA debunked it - Washington Post