December 19, 2024, 1:28pm
Drones over New Jersey isn’t the name of a terrible new pop punk band, it’s something that’s really happening in The Kingdom of Springsteen. There isn’t a lot of concrete information or explanation about these night visitors. I would guess that this is less likely to be a case of organized conspiracy, and more likely to be a case of weird coincidence, leading to self-fulfilling sightings, leading to predictable online hysteria and bleary idiocy.
Still, the situation has gotten so tense and elevated that the governor urged people to calm down and brought in the FBI to investigate. Even worse, people seem to be taking matters into their own hands, based on this great piece of service journalism by northjersey.com: “Is it legal to shoot down a drone?”
The answer is no, you can’t open fire at lights you see in the sky. But because America treats guns like celebrities (sexy, important, sometimes excusably volatile), you can’t presume that sky-shooting is illegal.
My first thought was that given our foreign policy, it’s a bit rich for Americans to be complaining about unwanted drones in their skies. But my second thought was, “Is this some kind of literary stunt?” Could an author be behind this? And why? Here are my current working theories.
William Gibson
Let’s get the obvious sci-fi guys out of the way here first. Gibson doesn’t strike me as the kind of author who would launch a fleet of drones as a promotional or marketing gimmick, but he does seem like the kind of author who would love to experiment with something bizarre like this. Let him have his fun, I say!
The Ghost of Philip K. Dick
PKD had a lot of well-publicized brushes with the paranormal and paranoid — his phantom twin, his thinking that reality was a mass delusion, his loony accusations that his peers were communist sleeper agents. So I could see him as the kind of person who departed the vale of tears with such strange and aggressive energy that he busted through to a powerful plane of existence where he could possess a bunch of drones to harass Jersey with.
James Patterson
Patterson often cowrites his books, so perhaps these drones are being deployed to pick up last-minute 2024 drafts from his ghostwriters. If you’ve got Patterson money, maybe flying a drone into a contract writer’s window to snag pages or a zip drive is more secure than email. Definitely sounds like more fun, and since he cowrote that book with Bill Clinton, I bet he could get official FAA clearance for something like this.
Zach Braff
Feels like this could be an unorthodox research method for Garden State 2, so that Braff can get a new perspective on his home state. I would watch a Harmony Korine directed sequel to the indie rom-com filmed entirely through night vision drone cameras.
David Brooks
Have the bobos taken to the air? Is America’s real political center ~1,000 feet over New Jersey? Can we expect a forthcoming op-ed titled “What Flying Drones Around Taught Me About Social Media Hysterics, And Why It Explains Trump’s Win”?
Sarah J. Maas
These lights are looking a bit like fae, are they not? Maybe the reigning queen of romantasy is bringing her fantasy world to life. I would be more inclined to think this was Maas if the drones were flying more seductively, like creatures beckoning us to a sexy, more interesting realm — not New York, but rather some kind of hot elves dimension.
Elena Ferrante
Maybe we’ve all been looking in the wrong direction and the elusive, real identity of the author isn’t a person, but rather a confederated collection of Italian rotary-wing aircraft.
Malcolm Gladwell
Mr. 10,000 Hours is a likely culprit to be cruising his drones around the Garden State. Who knows what kind of project it could be for, but I’m sure the lesson will be something about how social media is akin to being a middle child, which explains the whole economy, or that broken windows theory actually was right all along.
Michael Lewis
It just feels like Michael Lewis would do this for an interview. Maybe he’s writing a book on Bezos and is doing a ride-along with Amazon drones?
dril
The writer and comedian behind the @dril account is from Jersey, and has already posted about the drones twice. And incessantly buzzing the home state with drones for asinine reasons sounds like something dril would do. Could these weird buzzing lights be Weird Twitter jumping into the real world?
