Deep in the backwater sector of the Orion Arm, the High Council of Galactic Observation intercepts Earth’s unencrypted radio and television bleed-off from the late 2000s and 2010s. While most interstellar species broadcast clean, mathematical telemetry, humanity’s primary deep-space exports turn out to be deeply compressed, highly edited YouTube Poop videos.
https://youtu.be/Y7WtkdLQ6PM
Having no concept of non-linear video editing, satire, or digital compression artifacts, the Council’s top xenobiologists and military analysts reach a terrifying conclusion: Humans are non-Euclidean reality warpers.
According to galactic analysis of the intercepted "historical archives":
In a panic, the Galactic Council votes unanimously to erect a Class-Omega Interstellar Exclusion Zone. A massive, automated hazard grid is deployed in a three-light-year radius around the Sol System, marking the area as a cosmic hazard zone.
Humanity has no idea any of this is happening. SETI scientists are baffled by the total silence in deep space, routinely complaining that "there’s nothing out there but static." Meanwhile, a teenager in 2012 renders an eight-minute video titled [YTP] Mario Eats a Toaster and Dies and uploads it to YouTube, unaware that the radio bleed-off is currently beam-forming straight toward Proxima Centauri.