In the early morning hours of February 27, Milwaukee’s FOX6 WakeUp program caught a glimpse of some strange lights flying over downtown. “Are those fireworks? What is that?” the crew initially wondered, before landing on “Aliens?” “It’s getting weirder by the second!” they later exclaimed. “Um…we’re gonna…do some…digging…” And digging they did, eventually discovering that the “lights” were just a flock of seagulls flying over Milwaukee County Courthouse, an optical illusion produced by the shutter speed and frame rate of the camera. FOX6’s Amy DuPont even went down to the courthouse and shot a second video of the seagulls. Case closed. The end.

The internet, of course, was having none of it. Countless tired, weary conspiracy theories popped up in the wake of Seagullgate 2018, and countless tired, weary conspiracy theories persist months later. Take, for instance, this video from “Destination Declassified,” which never met an Occam’s Razor it couldn’t dull. Some highlights:

2:40 – “If you compare the two videos, seagulls seem much less likely. The movements just seem different, as is the height of the objects in question.”

Um, factoring in the shutter speed and frame rate, the movements look exactly the same. Dude even does a side-by-side video! As for the “height” issue, the original video was from a tower-cam high above the city, while the second was filmed from the ground. Seagulls!

3:00 – “Many believe the second report was just a cover story.”

Follow the implied scenario here: FOX6 accidentally captured footage of aliens or whatever. FOX6 was immediately contacted by the government or whatever and pressured to cook up a cover story. FOX6 immediately ran down to the courthouse and found something that looked exactly like the thing they initially captured. Seagulls!

3:20 – “What is interesting, is this was not the first time this phenomenon has been witnessed over this area.”

Yep, you can see a quick flash of something in a video from a few days earlier, proving that either a.) aliens exist, and are regularly flying over downtown Milwaukee (and are only ever seen by FOX6 tower-cams), or b.) seagulls!

4:35 – “So what about aliens? One thing’s for sure. Until further information, they are UFOs, as they cannot be identified.”

They were indeed unidentified flying objects at first, but they quickly became identified flying objects. Seagulls!