Spewing Hate out into the Universe

Many dozens of light years away from Earth lies the planet Dun, home to the Dunsites. The Dunsites are a lifeform remarkably similar to Earth’s Humans. In a remarkable case of parallel evolution, they have very similar anatomies. The main differences are that humans have a useless appendix and an equally useless pinkie toe. The Dunsites have a slightly blueish tinge to their skin. Also, Dunsite brains work very differently to humans. While capable of just as impressive feats of science, beautiful works of art, and grand constructions, they rigidly stick to their culture. This is not because they are incapable of independent thought. Dunsites simply don’t have the drive to think differently. The thought never occurs to them. Their science follows a very linear trajectory. Their art is mostly the same scenes painted (or sculpted or created via any other medium) over and over again^[1]. Their constructions all follow what they consider to be the most efficient design. While this might seem odd to humans, they have still managed to reach a level of advancement approximately that of 20th-century Earth.

Following the agreed-upon scientific trajectory, the Dunsites begin experimenting with radio astronomy. They point their telescopes at an orangey-yellow star several dozen light years away, and a plethora of signals erupt from it. Carefully, the team of scientists dissect each of the frequencies and discover moving images from another world. “Life on other worlds!” the headlines read. Of course, sending signals back is immediately tried, but the return trip to Earth at the speed of light is close to a century, so there is no hope of a response in the lifetime of any Dunsites. Still, the public is fascinated by these pictures from another world, and the scientists set up rebroadcast systems so that the whole of Dun can watch the shows from another world.

The variety of shows is perplexing to the Dunsites. The variety of cultures on Earth is unthinkable to Dunsites with their single culture. As their knowledge of these alien cultures increases, they open small neighbourhoods based on the various parts of Earth as novelty attractions, akin to Earth’s various Chinatowns, Little Italys and so on. Restaurants with accurate decor from documentaries and menus based on their closest representations of Earth ingredients. Apart from this, nothing much changed on Dunsite. Earth’s cultures didn’t offer much outside of novelty. Dunsites had never seen religion as necessary and didn’t see anything of use in any of Earth’s many offers of them. Some of the human scientific ideas are intriguing, but the Dunsites prefer to stick to their previously planned order of scientific inquiry.

But one aspect of humanity that did pipe the interest of Dunsite society as more than a novelty: queerness. As previously mentioned, Dunsites had a very similar anatomy to humans^[2]. This included having two sexes for the purposes of reproduction, roughly equivalent to humans. However, there are no gay Dunsites. Not even a slightly bicurious one. It’s not that the idea of being with someone of the same sex is repulsive to them, or illegal, or immoral, or seen as some affront to God^[3]. The idea of being with someone of the same sex had just never occurred to any of them before.

So, some of the Dunsites decide to see what sex with the same sex is like. Some of them don’t find it appealing, but others find it equally or more enjoyable than heterosexual sex. Almost overnight, a homosexual and bisexual community is born.

Dunsites also had never had an idea of gender identity before. They just accepted that they were the gender they had been told they were and went with it. Again, the television shows of the humans show people changing how they identify. Another thought that the Dunsites had never previously thought about. Trans people, non-binary people, genderfluidity: all new concepts to the Dunsitres. Soon communities representing the whole alphabet of queerness appear on Dunsite.

In thousands of years of recorded history, Dun had never had any minorities. Everyone fitted into their monoculture. Now, within a short space of time, Dunsite went from having no minorities to dozens of them. At first, no one paid much attention, and everything continued as it had for thousands of years before. No one cared who another member of society was having sex with. It didn’t seem something worth being upset over. Unfortunately, the Dunsites keep watching Earth’s broadcasts, and some of the shows talk about how bad queer people are. How trans women are invading women’s spaces, how queer people are often pedophiles, and how they use surrogacy to steal children from their rightful biological mothers. Some Dunsites start wondering if there was a good reason there hadn’t been queer people before, and that maybe it would be safer to just get rid of them. They start petitioning their leaders to do something about this impending crisis.

Dunsite has many political parties. However, due to their monoculturalism, all the parties have the same policies^[4], so it’s effectively a one-party system. For once, there is actually an issue that splits the Dunsite population, and so it also splits the political parties. Having never had to debate any political topic before, the politicians are at a loss for what to do. So, once again, they study the Earth transmissions and learn all the underhand political tactics of the humans. Politics becomes vile. Personal attacks soar. Ordinary Dunsites are forced to take sides. Their once happy globenet, their version of the internet, has no in-built moderation^[5]. It had never been needed. So, hate speech explodes. Every social media site becomes full of hate for trans people, gays, and anyone who is at all different.

As time goes on, the Dunsites start splitting into countries for the first time in their history. Some denounce queerness and try to rebuild a classical Dunsite society. The first step is sending all the queer people to internment camps. The second step is worse.

Other countries try to build a new society of inclusion. The world split into two factions, and they loath each other. Relations brake down as the anti-queer countries bring in tariffs on products they suspect are manufactured by queer Dunsites. This causes the economies of both blocks to crumble, each blaming each other for the circumstances. Talk of war begins.

The thing about Dunsite scientists and engineers, is while the monoculture has constrained them, they have learned to be very efficient when given a goal. So, once they are tasked with creating the most destructive weapons imaginable, they excel at the task. As relations sour, worse and worse weapons are devised, far beyond anything the humans were ever able to create. The Dunsites had learned the doctrine of mutually assured destruction from the humans, and they were still alive, so they can only assume that it was a good idea.

Years later, on Earth, a scientist monitoring for gamma-ray bursts detects one coming from a star that logically shouldn’t be able to produce one that intense. They make a note of it for further study, but the paper they write the note is later mistaken for trash, and no one ever follows up on what could have caused such a destructive energy burst.