We’d just watched two blue jays fly overhead when he asked if I’d heard of the Birds Aren’t Real movement. “It’s a whole thing. There are millions of these ‘Bird Truthers’ out there.”
Someone else on the hike, who’d earlier pointed out a red-tailed hawk, chimed in. “Ah, those nuts. Ya know, many of their followers actually believe birds aren’t real.”
Birds Aren’t Real is a group created around the theory that, between 1959 and 2001, the US government completed a gruesome genocide of over 12 million birds and replaced them with flying drones that record our every move. And now, if Bird is the word, it stands for B.asic I.nformation R.ecording D.rone.
This conversation happened while I was on a Digital Detox Retreat in the woods of Connecticut. “Well, this is bad timing,” I thought to myself. I wouldn’t have access to a computer for three more days to research this theory. And it didn’t seem fair I wasn’t allowed to take photos of these birds if they were actively recording me.
How could I enjoy a “digital detox” knowing it might be robotic drones chirping me awake each morning? And what level of EMF were they giving off? There are far more birds flying overhead here than in the city. I wouldn’t go to an AA meeting in the basement of a cocktail lounge.
The group laughed it off and changed the subject, but my mind raced with questions: Have I been paying a premium for duck all these years for no reason? Is the phrase, tastes like chicken just the name of a CIA operation?
Of course, it would explain why birds hang out on powerlines. How else would they charge their batteries? And I suppose it would make birdwatching more exciting, knowing that avian voyeurism goes both ways.
When we got our phones and computers back at the end of the retreat, everyone went around in a circle to say what they’d do first, and how they would “re-integrate” with technology. “I’m looking up Birds Aren’t Real,” I said as if the answer wasn’t obvious.
The videos I found on YouTube had hundreds of millions of views. One video showed the leader of the movement jumping up and down with a megaphone on top of a van, rallying thousands of followers in his flock. He then leads them in a march around a government building, all of them chanting, "Birds Aren’t Real!” as if they were trying to sing down the walls of Jerico.
The movement’s official website even sells merchandise. My personal favorite is a tee-shirt that reads, If It Flies, It Spies.
The punchline of it all didn’t appear until I watched the leader, a twenty-something kid named, Peter McIndoe, in a national news interview. The interviewer leans in and asks, “This is satire, right?”
McIndoe shakes his head. “That’s offensive. I don’t think you’d say that if I came out here and said, ‘birds are real.’ I don’t see why the other side of the argument can’t be met with equal respect.”
At that point, I wondered why they didn’t just bring out a cage of live pigeons right then and there? Anyone with a bee-bee gun and a pocket knife could carve this conspiracy theory wide open.
A few moments later, however, McIndoe breaks character. He confesses that (I hope you’re sitting down), the movement is a joke. It is 100% satire and parody of the time in which we live.
He explains the goal of Birds Aren’t Real is simple: Give people a way to participate and laugh at conspiracy culture, rather than be terrified by it.
“It’s a way,” McIndoe says, “to fight lunacy with lunacy.”
Conspiracy Theory Cosplay at its best.
II
The moon landing was faked. The earth is flat. Elvis is alive and Paul is dead. Those are the cute conspiracy theories. The classics that leave true believers hopped up on excitement (with just a dash of paranoia).
In a world where everything falls off the fringes instead of reverting to the mean, it’s no surprise people are seeking shelter in a (mis)information safe space. To entertain even half of today’s conspiracy theories is enough to make you cry. In 2020, as the media turned up the heat on the misinformation cold war, I went from, “No way. Shut up. There’s no microchip in the vaccine,” all the way to, “Ok, ok, let’s say Bill Gates is a bio-terrorist… He’s still done some great things in Africa.”
The speed and vigor in which conspiracy spread during the pandemic show how important it is for humans to try and make sense of the unexplainable. We all twist our identities around a set of beliefs. But now, as opinions become birthright and more lines get drawn in the sand, it’s harder to bury your head like a robotic ostrich trying to get some sleep.
Pick a side and hold still: Pro-choice. Pro-life. Pro… Bird?
We all know the 24-hour news cycle is a birdcage of depression. But as someone who keeps a fairly strict media diet, I know most of the misinformation in my brain comes from my own personal writer’s room.
There are the things I want to believe. Lies I tell myself for the sake of self-preservation. When truth flies north for winter, leaving you with a dark, empty void, what’s left to fill it with besides personal conspiracy theories around what went wrong?
But then, something like Birds Aren’t Real appears. It reminds you that it’s not too late to hold up a mirror to your own ridiculousness. Because when the truth feels far away, and you reach the moment where everything you thought you knew for certain has flown the coup…
A sense of humor helps.
Living is a choice of having fun or freaking out, choose wisely