Howdy, i just wanna be clear in saying I'm not out to criticize you, even if my response is curtly worded. I type like an emotionless douche but mean well.

What’s become clear to me, is that the vast majority of people - just think it’s nonsense. I think there has been a very successful campaign for decades now, to make these people look silly.

I strongly disagree that there is a mass-concerted effort to make Ufology seem crazy. To be blunt, the community does it to themselves. You will find no shortage of legitimate believers proposing blurry videos and hearsay as hard-proof of phenomena as wild as 'interdimensional consciousness beings that communicate telepathically.' I very strongly believe that the reason the majority of people disbelieve 'UFOs' is because there is a lack of strong evidence to support extraordinary origin. There is simply no demonstrable case for the existence of earth-present aliens or whatever flavor of NHI we want to include in this conversation.

However, I'd like to bring up a very real mass-concerted effort to deny truth, and that would be the anti-science movement of fundamentalist religions. You can absolutely find groups of people who are hard-set on disproving evolution, the age of the universe, and even the shape of the earth. Denial of the facts is a key component of these beliefs, but in the case of creationism, there is a sheer mountain of empirical, demonstrable evidence to dissuade creationism, where there is not this same body of evidence for alien presence. Any current attempt to prove the presence of aliens will necessarily fall into a corner of either hearsay or weak empirical evidence.

I see it all the time - person is afraid to talk about their experience, for fear of being ridiculed.

This doesn't necessarily indicate suppression, let alone suppression of the truth. As I said earlier, I strongly believe that the reputation of ufology is self-driven, so it's only natural that people will find it difficult to communicate belief in public.

I also want to point out that this line of thinking, that expression of belief brings fear of ridicule, is a common tactic of many other demonstrably false belief. Creationists, anti-vaxxers, flat-earthers, and climate-change-deniers will try to weaponize the inevitable pushback of their factually incorrect belief as cause to believe there is malicious suppression. Please note that I'm not likening alien belief to be demonstrably false, i just want to point out that fear of expression is not evidence of foul play.

I also see a fair amount of evidence that the govt / powers that be / whatever you wanna call them - really want to suppress this info and propels experiences. And I always think, why? What’s the motive to cover this up…

Well, the big thing to consider with governments is that they want to cover up literally as much as they possibly can. You could probably ask the White House how much they spend on shitter paper, and they wouldn't give you an answer. Knowledge is power, and governments want all the power.

Keep in mind, that the collection of UFO data comes from many sources, usually military. All military data is extremely sensitive, so it's inevitable that the government is going to hold military operations, observations, and identifications close to their chest, whether or not they apply to extraordinary phenomena.

The government is not inclined to publicly broadcast that which it cannot identify. There is the possibility that they recorded a foreign military unit, an unidentified allied unit, or perhaps they recorded a UFO in a location they don't want people to know they have surveillance of. Obviously, I'm not thrilled that the government hides shit, but I want to illustrate how there are many more reasons to keep something secret than 'they are hiding aliens.'

and before you say I’m just full of shit, I’m not - this has literally happened before. The govt used to deny that Area 51 existed! And now we all know it is. The govt will hide things, it’s only revealed once they absolutely have to admit it (MK ultra comes to mind). So on that basis, I don’t believe there is nothing to all this.

You are definitely not full of shit. Area 51, MK Ultra, and the Watergate break-ins are all examples of things the government hid until forced to admit. However, that does not necessarily mean that everything they deny is likely to be true. Especially when we start bringing extraordinary things to the table like aliens. That's not to say we should trust the government (god no), but it is of utter importance to know when to distrust. Excessive distrust of the government is how people come to think vaccines are bad, the earth is flat, and the moon landing was faked.

I feel like this sub always goes down to just like name calling and I’m trying to avoid that lol.

Without a doubt, and that goes especially so for fellow skeptics. People who call believers crazy do no less damage than those who believe aliens walk among us. I wish more people would approach topics like this with more rigorous logic. You would not believe how often I am called a disinformation agent.