Truly the brightest timeline

Can we put some snakegirls too? =)

lol this guy thinks a sentient race of cat-oids would let humans stay around short of enslavement

Tangential, this is also the best explanation why in Mass Effect the Asari, Batarians and Quarians look so human-like and many other species are sharing similarities with humans: A few cycles ago, a species adept at bio-engineering took special interest in those primates from E-arth and just asked themselves: "What would happen, if we mix their DNA with every other species in the galaxy?"

I’ve come to the conclusion…. That if there are species out there able to travel interstellar distances in a reasonable time, then they have the ability to know humans are fucking nuts- because they can detect the radioactive isotopes in the atmosphere.

Which means the only ones coming are even more nuts than we are.

This, leads me to assume that either, they’re genocidal maniacs out to destroy everything that’s not them, (a la the bad guys in Ian Douglas’ Semper Mars series,)

Or, they’re Space Mormons.

A civilization capable of interstellar travel would be a lot more advanced then we are. If we but this in perspective, we as humans don't really care about other species that much. Imagine a species that is more advanced tham we are compared to chimps. Some people respect chimps, but we keep them in zoos and destroy their living spaces. An interstellar civilization could see us even lower than that, just some primates living on a rock. They might not even think us intelligent, we only just have 'understood' quantum theory.

There's a Sci Fi trilogy about that. All aliens are omnicidal.

The main rule is "don't ever get spotted by another civilization". If another nearby civilization wants to conquer you, you could stop them by threatening to broadcast both our and their locations more broadly, a kind of mutually assured distruction.

They may have stupid politics like us and need us as a common enemy to unite their factions/be racist at. So even if theyre not naturally genocidal, they might choose to "for the greater good". Plus our sweet sweet natural resources/scrap.

Have you heard of the Fermi paradox?

The best estimates of how many intelligent civilizations there should be suggest that the galaxy should be teeming with them. If any of them evolved mere millions of years before we did, given our pace of technological improvement they should have figured out interstellar travel by now, and they should be broadcasting communication across the galaxy like we're doing. Yet we've detected nothing. Why?

A possible explanation is that an advanced civilization is exterminating all other civilizations, perhaps to avoid competition. It seems like a sensible approach to lie low until we can figure this out, just in case.

Basically the plot of the latest in a nutshell video:

How to Win an Interstellar War - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tybKnGZRwcU

Honestly I'd take the "we are alone" route, Chrysalids and Floaters from XCOM can go fuck themselves.

you mean both are absolutely awesome

If we're alone then its ours to take.

If we arent then we must embrace our oldest tendency and become alone. They will either become one with mankind much like the Neanderthals or they must simply perish.

Or we ARE the precursor civilization before they got destroyed

To eat

We are the only universe.

Yet we see nothing. Even if FTL is impossible, we should be seeing signs of more advanced civilizations (starts shifting due to Dyson swarms etc). Something in our understanding is very wrong, and most of the options are horrifying, in their own ways.

Why is not being alone in the universe a bad thing though?

There are possible concerns relating to the Fermi paradox. Perhaps there aren't many space faring civilizations because the most advance civilization exterminates others that they see as a potential threat.

But yeah, I also find it comforting to know our existence really isn't that big a deal lol. It just makes me feel like we should do what we can to get the most joy out of our lives while we're here

Maybe they’re also bickering and arguing about who killed who in the Guejenjdjja-Otoenenjda conflict, taking place in the desert of purple sand, with very geographically-literate Ghdisixoosbdbjzoakan college students obnoxiously cosplaying it in the quads

Yeah... But if it's some bacteria or equivalent... To me it's like it doesn't exist, like is cool but I would still feel alone in space.