There are a couple of ways to look at potential alien encounters.
First they will be technologically advanced as to seem almost supernatural to us. In this case there’s the possibility that they wouldn’t have much more than a passing interest. Ants could hold my attention for hours when I was a child but now it’s rare that an ant will hold my attention for more than a few seconds.
Second they could want something from us. This would likely be a bad thing due to their technological advantage making them unstoppable.
Third is that they would want to do something for us. Unfortunately that’s no more likely than the first two scenarios. I suppose it could be possible if we were the only alien life they’ve ever discovered.
And finally, maybe they just want to cut our grass and prepare our food.
Seriously, have any of you people ever seen a picture from the dark side?
Other than the obvious problem of faster than light travel, there is a significant problem of both time and distance.
That is, of the about 4.5 billion year life of Earth so far, people have been intelligent for about 100,000 years and technological for about 200 years. The universe itself is about 13.6 billion years. So we are really a flash in the pan.
This means that we need to mutually locate another such flash in the pan intelligent species, unless intelligent species, as species, tend to be very long lived. Otherwise, unless intelligent species create other intelligent species that can outlive them, it is unlikely that we would ever cross each other’s paths before one or the other is extinct.
Maybe they will have a book about “To Serve Man”.