In Pittsburgh, Memphis, and Los Angeles, billboards have sprung up that say, “Birds Aren’t Real.” On Instagram and TikTok, accounts of Birds Aren’t Real (Birds Aren’t Real) gained followers, and YouTube videos went viral.
Last month, Not Real Birds supporters even protested outside Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters to ask the company to change its logo, the bird.
All these facts are linked by a conspiracy theory fueled by Generation Z, according to which birds do not exist and are replicas installed on drones by the US government to spy on the population. Thousands of young people joined the movement.
It may sound like QAnon, the conspiracy theory that the world is controlled by an elite of Democrats who traffic in children. Except that the creator of Birds Are Not Real and his followers live a joke: they know that birds are real and that their theory was invented.
What Birds Are Not Real is, they say, a parody of a social movement with a purpose. In a post-truth world dominated by online conspiracy theories, young people have rallied around the initiative to defy, combat and ridicule misinformation. “It’s a way of ‘fighting craziness with craziness,” said Claire Chronis, 22, organizer of Birds Not Real in Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania).
At the heart of the movement is Peter McIndoe, 23, who created Birds Are Not Real for fun in Memphis in 2017. For years, he has lived the character of the conspiracy theory’s leading believer, ordering acolytes to revolt against those who challenged his dogma. But now, says McIndoe, he’s ready to reveal the parody.
“Dealing with the world of disinformation in recent years, we are aware of the fine line we are walking,” he said. “The idea was intended to be absurd, but we guarantee that nothing we say is too realistic.”
The majority of Birds Are Not Real members, many of whom are part of an activist network called the Bird Brigade, grew up in a world riddled with disinformation. Some have relatives who were victims of conspiracy theories. So for Generation Z members, movement is the way to collectively address these experiences. Mimicking conspiracy theorists, they found community and kinship, McIndoe said.
“Birds Are Not Real is not a shallow satire of conspiracies seen from the outside. It’s from the deep inside,” he said. “A lot of people in our generation feel the madness of it all, and Birds Ain’t Real has been a way for people to sue it.”
When McIndoe went to the University of Arkansas in 2016, he saw that he was not the only one to live with diverse realities. Then, in January 2017, he traveled to Memphis to visit friends. Donald Trump had just been sworn in as president, and there was a march of women in town. Pro-Trump protesters were there. When McIndoe saw them, he tore a sign off a wall, turned it inside out, and wrote at random, “Birds aren’t real.”
“It was a spontaneous joke, but it was a reflection of the absurdity that everyone felt,” he said.
Then McIndoe improvised the legend of the Unreal Birds conspiracy and explained that the plot began in 1970. Unknowingly, it was filmed and the video posted on Facebook went viral, particularly among teenagers in the south of the United States. “I started to take on the character and build the world he belonged in,” McIndoe said.
He and Connor Gaydos, a friend, wrote a false history of the movement, invented theories, and produced false documents and evidence to support their claims. “Turned became an experiment in disinformation,” McIndoe said. “And if someone believes birds aren’t real, we’re the least of their worries, because there’s no conspiracy they don’t believe in,” says Gaydos.
Birds members became a political force. Many join counter-demonstrators and true conspiracy theorists to reduce tensions and delegitimize people.
And McIndoe makes plans. Undressing the character will help the Unreal Birds expose true conspiracy theorists, he said, who hopes to collaborate with content creators and independent media like Channel 5 News to help people understand the US and the internet .
Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves
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