Editing Ground Crew Project (section)

==Credibility==
Helland states that the Ground Crew resorted to "many of the classic strategies to avoid prophetic disconfirmation and [consequent] [[cognitive dissonance]]."  For instance, he employs face-saving strategies such as "disclaimers", and "exploits the full gamut of the 'vocabulary of temporality.'"<ref name=Palmer2003p338/>

In general, Nidle has managed the failed prophecy by engaging in what J Gordon Melton states is a reconceptualization through the process of spiritualisation: a UFO landing with advanced technology is changed into a need to raise humanity spiritually by humans themselves.  In the case of the Ground Crew, Nidle "refashions his following from a passive audience of 'netheads' waiting to be 'zapped' by a superior alien technology into involved participants" who form committees of activists helping Mother Earth and humanity.<ref name=Palmer2003p338/><ref name=Gruenschloss2003p25/>

Helland states that due to the virtual nature of the group, and the lack of observable and empirical data, it is impossible to accurately account for the membership which may have declined drastically with the failed 1996-7 predictions.  The group has, however, generated sufficient income to maintain its website and a core group of devotees.   But earlier text can be altered or deleted.  Helland observes that the movement's most notorious period of failed prophecy is no longer on line, and new members may never be exposed to this component.<ref name=Helland2000p143/>

This online, millenarian narrative functions so like fiction that Palmer and Helland have devoted an article to a literary/aesthetic analysis of the religion rather than the normal sociological discussion. Following the literary critic Austin Wright, they explore the discourse as a literary art form.  Virtual reality is the vehicle of the myth - which conveys "a vivid imaginary world [and]... an intense mood of apocalyptic expectancy" for its participants. They also show how Nidle moves from the self-generated fictional world to the narrator-controlled fictional world as the prophecies fail.<ref>Palmer, Susan (2003) pp331-3</ref>  They comment that the instant inception, rapid evolution and spectacular metamorphoses of religions on the internet will continue to dazzle scholars who surf the web.<ref>Palmer, Susan (2003) p345</ref>