Why does everyone who claims to have seen an alien, describe them to look exactly alike?
Aliens are the “demons” and “devils” of the scientific era. People in olden times seem to have been pretty consistent in describing the demons that plagued them; folks who think aliens are after 'em just take the culturally-popular image and go with it.
Because they haven’t seen shit. They are just repeating what other people claim to have seen. In any case, their descriptions are just wrong. Aliens bear a closer resemblance to Dennis Rodman than they do to little green men. 
There are also pseudo-scientific essays which describe what a creature intelligent enough to master space travel “must” look like. They have to be cerebral, so they have big heads and they have largely foregone physical exertion so they are slender and delicate, they must be dextrous so they have fingers, etc., etc.
Of course this is all nonsense, because, after all, the real reason they look like they do is so the actors can fit into the costumes, even if they have to use little people.
According to Star Trek the biggest difference between alien races is different forehead corrugations.
“Aliens” are demons. They’ve just picked this new form to fool mankind 
(Actually, I think there are some fundies that seriously believe that) :eek:
If you really want to get into it, the UFO devotees have lists of the different alien species we’ve supposedly contacted: the “greys”, the “browns”, etc.
But no matter what their foreheads look like, they all speak perfect English. I think this is just God’s plan for the cosmos, you know? That all these alien races speak God’s language…
It’s a sign.
While the large majority of people today would describe an alien in a similar way, this was not at all the case in the past. Over the years, just about every imaginable alien form has been claimed to have visited earth. Only relatively recently has there begun to be a consensus on the look of an alien.
(I think we have Whitley Striber to thank most for this.)
Actually, they don’t.
In the literature on the subject, there are many different types of aliens described. The most common are the “Grays” (big heads, big dark eyes, small bodies), but there are also some called Nordics that are more human appearing, some described as looking like giant Praying Mantis, and many others.
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Is anybody else thinking about this shape?
It looks better when I use shaving foam!!
I prefer to make it with mashed potatoes.
Dunno why, but I have 3 guesses:
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most likely, IMHO the generic alien has been so propagated by the media that it’s what comes into people’s heads when they see something they think is an alien.
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the typical shape of an alien is pretty close to a human… it a reflection of the fact that the brain of the observer is looking for something human-shaped…
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BECAUSE THATS WHAT THEY ** LOOK* LIKE!!!
WAGs…
(1) Because that is the archetype created by popular culture, so when someone dreams/hallucinates/mis-perceives/lies about it, that is the image they get.
(2) Aliens are thought to be futuristic and those little green/grey men appear like a future “evolved” form of humans. Kind of a self projection.
(3) Descriptions of these types of aliens get taken more seriously than descriptions of a floating brain with three eyes and a bowtie.
(4) It is a projected mental image of the fear of being controlled by a stranger (featureless, big eyes, smarter, stronger, etc.)
Nowadays, the standard “gray” is obviously a case of cultural contamination. But this has only been popularized for about a decade. “Communion” came out in 1987. At this time, there were a number of people undergoing hypnotic regression (which is an issue unto itself) who, without having seen any cultural references to “grays” (b/c there weren’t any yet), consistently and separately described the same faces.
Now, whether or not you believe that these creatures are real aliens, or just some hallucination, these early ones were not produced by cultural contamination. I would guess they stem either from real, common experiences or from some unconscious Jungian archetype hardwired into our brains…like the “tunnel of light” in NDEs.
The first couple that was “abducted” in the very early sixties described some creatures that were obviously grays (and that looked a lot like some sci-fi creatures from the fifties). I heard Streiber say that he never watched Close Encounters or any other movie, but he is too old to have NEVER seen pictures from ALL the magazines, TV shows, and movies from 1960 to 1986.
My brother had a comic book with gray type people before 1960. The story line (Aquaman in the future?) used exactly Pluto’s explanation for their appearance.
Well in 1977 Close Encounters of the Third Kind had images of “Greys” and this was quite a popular film to say the least.
I remember seeing an article in Omni magazine years ago where they asked biological artists (or whatever they’re called…the people who have talent as artists but draw pictures for Biology textbooks and the like) to give their version of what the HUMAN race will look like in the future. Extrapolating from evolution so far these people moved time forward and figured what we might look like far in the future. What do you get? Something akin to your typical ‘Gray’ type alien. Why? Well, the human race seems to be evolving to a physically weaker form. In addition, we are losing things slowly like our little toes, hairiy bodies and so on. Go far enough ahead in time and you or I may look like a monkey-man to our future race.
They also had artists do speculative drawings on what other alien species may look like. In those cases the form they took was VERY dependent on what assumptions you make about their home planet. For example, if they come from a big, high gravity planet, they are likely to be smaller and low to the ground. Falling in such an environment would be a bad thing as you could break bones and such too easily. if the alien was from a small, low gravity planet you could get more frilly, delicate varieties of alien. Add to that atmosphere and weather issues and other items and the artists come-up with an endless variety of alien types. FTR they make no claim to drawing anything real and readily admit it is all 100% speculative on their part.
When I was an impressionable lad, I remember seeing a book my brother had called “The Interrupted Journey”, about the “regression therapy” sessions administered to a young couple named Barney and Betty Hill who gave supposedly independent accounts of their “abduction” that more or less jibed with each other. Anyway their drawings of the almond-eyed aliens are my first memory of seeing that type of alien depicted. I don’t recall the year, but I’m guessing the book must have been published mid to late 60’s, long before the Whitley Stieber version. The Hill accounts have long since been debunked of course but at the time they sure gave me the willies.