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What's Behind the 'Birds Aren't Real' Protests? (yahoo.com) 169

It's not your everyday fake news, explains the New York Times. (Alternate URLs here.) In Pittsburgh; Memphis, Tennessee; and Los Angeles, massive billboards recently popped up declaring, "Birds Aren't Real." On Instagram and TikTok, Birds Aren't Real accounts have racked up hundreds of thousands of followers, and YouTube videos about it have gone viral. Last month, Birds Aren't Real adherents even protested outside Twitter's headquarters in San Francisco to demand that the company change its bird logo.

The events were all connected by a Gen Z-fueled conspiracy theory, which posits that birds do not exist and are really drone replicas installed by the U.S. government to spy on Americans. Hundreds of thousands of young people have joined the movement, wearing Birds Aren't Real T-shirts, swarming rallies and spreading the slogan. It might smack of QAnon, the conspiracy theory that the world is controlled by an elite cabal of child-trafficking Democrats. Except that the creator of Birds Aren't Real and the movement's followers are in on a joke: They know that birds are, in fact, real and that their theory is made up.

What Birds Aren't Real truly is, they say, is a parody social movement with a purpose. In a post-truth world dominated by online conspiracy theories, young people have coalesced around the effort to thumb their nose at, fight and poke fun at misinformation. It is Gen Z's attempt to upend the rabbit hole with absurdism... Most Birds Aren't Real members, many of whom are part of an on-the-ground activism network called the Bird Brigade, grew up in a world overrun with misinformation. Some have relatives who have fallen victim to conspiracy theories. So for members of Gen Z, the movement has become a way to collectively grapple with those experiences. By cosplaying conspiracy theorists, they have found community and kinship [according to 23-year-old Peter McIndoe, who created Birds Aren't Real on a whim in 2017...]

Cameron Kasky, 21, an activist from Parkland, Florida, who helped organize the March for Our Lives student protest against gun violence in 2018 and is involved in Birds Aren't Real, said the parody "makes you stop for a second and laugh. In a uniquely bleak time to come of age, it doesn't hurt to have something to laugh about together."

McIndoe began selling Birds Aren't Real merchandise in 2018, according to the article, and now brings in "several thousand dollars a month" with some help from his friend Connor Gaydos.

"If anyone believes birds aren't real," Gaydos tells the Times, "we're the last of their concerns, because then there's probably no conspiracy they don't believe."
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What's Behind the 'Birds Aren't Real' Protests?

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  • by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Saturday December 11, 2021 @01:34PM (#62069669)

    ". . . That Thou Art Mindful of Him"

    If people get used to robotic bees and birds, they'll also accept human ones.

    • by Baleet ( 4705757 )

      If people get used to robotic bees and birds, they'll also accept human ones.

      Human bees and birds? Nah. I'd have a pretty hard time believing that.

  • by gurps_npc ( 621217 ) on Saturday December 11, 2021 @01:43PM (#62069689) Homepage

    Some idiot stars something as a joke, such as "Flat Earth" or Q, etc. They put stuff out there, people believe it, and the next thing you know people with guns are storming the Audobon demanding to know where the drones are kept!

    DO NOT DO THIS.

    If you start a parody site, people are stupid enough to fall for it and become militant. You are no different than the scum bags that say Trump won the election.

    • by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Saturday December 11, 2021 @01:57PM (#62069747)

      Let's assume, just for a moment, that someone wanted to replace all the birds with drones. How would they cover up such a massive operation?

      The obvious answer is to start a fake conspiracy theory, so anyone suspecting that birds are drones is ridiculed as a credulous fool. Once the public is primed to disbelieve any evidence for the drones, the birds can be surreptitiously replaced.

      So, yes, birds are real. But soon, they won't be.

      • There's a theory that the birds in Fallout 4 are actually synth spies, with some reasonable evidence to uphold that. Also a theory that cats are synths but that's more of a faith thing based upon the Fallout Bible.

      • How would they cover up such a massive operation?

        Good grief man - did you even stay awake for one minute of your "Introduction to Illuminati 1.0.1." course? This is why Kubrick got his major money for the Cover Up Manual that he wrote as part of completing Operation "Moon Landings - H0 h0 ho"

        You think we leave these things to chance? That's why passing "ItI 1.0.1" is a required course for any aspiring Illuminatus. We do NOT need another FUBAR like the Columbus mess up again!

        Report to Under-Volcano-Lair "S

      • Let's assume, just for a moment, that someone wanted to replace all the birds with drones. How would they cover up such a massive operation?

        The obvious answer is to start a fake conspiracy theory

        They laid the groundwork with "birds are dinosaurs," to introduce flexibility in beliefs about birds.
        (/s)

    • We live in a world filled with deranged, mentally defective people and starting something like "birds aren't real" is akin to falsely yelling "Fire" in a crowded movie theater.

      I guess I better call up my local bird sanctuary and give them a warning to be on the lookout for kooks that intend to destroy the place and kill all of the birds inside. :-\

      • It's not filled with them. If it was, the world wouldn't function. It's a very small minority, which is just making a lot of noise and being amplified by sensationalist people and algorithms
        • "It's not filled with them. If it was, the world wouldn't function. It's a very small minority"

          But they do a lot of damage, sometimes taking lives enmasse. We don't need to be rialing up these people.

          When I read the part where they were protesting outside of Twitter's HQ, I got the feeling that this "movement" has started to transition from joke to people actually believing it. Maybe the ringleaders of this protest told the media it was a joke, but I'm sure they have some true believers in t

    • Too late. This site has been going for at least two decades & look what it's done to 'Murica: https://landoverbaptist.org/ [landoverbaptist.org]
    • Its always difficult to tell with stories like this, and flat earthers, what percentage of the proponents are trolls. For flat earth, I've always assumed it was at least 99% trolls. Surely real humans can't really be this dumb can they?
      • by NagrothAgain ( 4130865 ) on Saturday December 11, 2021 @03:02PM (#62069981)
        Flat Earth and 5G started as "pranks" and at first the participants were fully "in on" the joke. Then mass media found out, and were too stupid to "get it" so they started running it as a real story. This provided a huge exposure and so a bunch of idiots found out, thought it was real, and eventually made it into a real conspiracy.

        Q was a little different, in that the original "members" were presenting their theories as real to people outside the group, in an effort to Troll morons and just generally stir up trouble. But the end result was the same, enough stupid people ended up getting on board and now it's a "seriousc conspiracy movement.

        "Birds Aren't Real" was, up until recently, purely a Satire thing, making fun of conspiracy groups by using what ought to be a ridiculously over the top theory. But mass media just picked this story up and it's in the process of gaining momentum. Give it 6 months and "Birds Aren't Real" will join the ranks of an actual Conspiracy with real Believers.

        • When I read that story about a US train driver attempting to sink the USNS Mercy hospital ship by slamming his train into it from 2km away (the train de-railed on a bridge and landed in a car park about 1.8km away), because the he believed the hospital was a US government plot to subjugate the citizens by injecting them with some some serum; I naturally thought "HAHA someone's taking the piss". But I clicked anyway, and it was true.

          At that point it dawned on me I couldn't no longer distinguish satire from reality. It was simply not possible any more to make up shit so insane it couldn't be true. That meant you could not write a parody and assume it was immediately recognisable as such. A long time ago (in internet time) that outcome was summed up by a new fascinating observation on how the internet was changing the world called Poe's law [wikipedia.org].

          Nathan Poe was referring to the actions of specific groups at the time. Groups whose beliefs they are so insane it wasn't possible to parody them. But when Poe's law first came out naturally doomsayers claimed the internet would drag all news sources, including traditional mass media, into a dystopian Poe world. It wouldn't just apply to observations about nutter groups and conspiracy theorists, it would apply to everything - including main stream news. The proposition seemed so absurd it was clearly a joke, a parody. It showed if you apply Poe's Law to the world as it existed back then you end up with a contradiction, so it can't possibly be true in the general case.

          It's so funny in hindsight. It was a joke alright - but the joke was on me.

    • So the reality is that a significant number of human beings are complete fucking morons. That's hardly a revelation. If the last five years have taught us anything, it is that humanity, despite the largest most complex brains in the animal kingdom, are by and large as contemptibly witless as a chimpanzee.

    • by UnknowingFool ( 672806 ) on Saturday December 11, 2021 @02:25PM (#62069861)
      I disagree. If someone is dumb enough to believe that birds do not exist, it would not matter whether a parody site is created or not. They would have heard nonsense from a cousin's mechanic's friend and believed it.
    • Those who are really successful, end up with a new religion.
    • by sphealey ( 2855 ) on Saturday December 11, 2021 @02:37PM (#62069907)

      - - - - - Some idiot stars something as a joke, such as "Flat Earth" or Q, etc. - - - - - -

      Or as with L Ron Hubbard they deliberately and knowingly start a religion to make a million bucks and it gets... a bit out of control.

      • L Ron sort of fell into his own belief system though, or at least pretended to believe enough that it caused severe personal problems. After a serious motorcycle accident he did not go to a doctor to get treatment, and instead put up with days of pain before getting some medicine. And for someone who advocated that all health problems can be solved with dianetics, he had severe health issues later in life.

        • by hey! ( 33014 )

          That's the power of ego validation. It changes you. He may have started the whole thing on a lark, but being a cult leader means having endless ego-validation on tap. That's bound to rot your brain.

    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      If you start censoring yourself because of what some people *might* think, you might as well give up on having anything to say at all. Forget irony, there is nothing so straightfoward that it doesn't come out twisted after passing through *someone's* mind.

      The real problem is with social media business models. If users paid for the services they used directly, rather than being aggregated into bundles to be sold to eyeball-hungry third parties, then people with cognitive weakness to conspiracy theories wou

    • Those who started flat earth and Q and other stuff do not come out publicly and say that it's a satire. They have nefarious intent and they succeed to some extent. This is different because there is an honest disclosure .
    • by splutty ( 43475 )

      Anything you put on the internet, no matter how utterly ridiculous, will be believed by *someone*.

    • by Darinbob ( 1142669 ) on Saturday December 11, 2021 @03:54PM (#62070175)

      Flat Earth was taken very very seriously by the founders, and is not new, it was big in the mid 1800s. It's also part of a backlash against science in support of religion, which is why it got big when theories of evolution showed up. Before then, it was generally accepted as fact that the earth was round back to the ancient Greeks. Even Columbus wasn't unique in thinking it was round, he just mistakenly thought the earth was lots smaller than it was.

      So Alfred Russel Wallace. equal with Darwin at discovering evolution, was goaded into taking a bet to prove that the earth was flat or not. And Wallace proved it with an experiment, but the other side refused to pay up and it ended up in court and Wallace lost a fair chunk of money and time. Eventually courts rules that Wallace did NOT win the bet, but it was on a technicality because the bet was withdrawn by the loser. But the loser went on to claim that he had won anyway, and this really started the modern flat earther movement in earnest.

      You will indeed find a lot of serious religious backing for some of their claims. There are even more bizarre ones out there, such as hollow earth, and geocentrism (earth is the center of the universe or solar system). Flat earthers hate the hollow earthers, but they sort of get along with some of the geocentrics. The main argument for the geocentrics is a literal interpretation of the Bible.

    • Indeed. This happened many times before. Look for example here [gnu.org], and see what followed from that...
  • by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Saturday December 11, 2021 @01:46PM (#62069695)

    Just how nuts does conspiracy bullshit have to be for people to not believe it? How can you POSSIBLY believe that? This is really next level stupid.

    I lost faith in humanity. If people believe that bullshit, they'll believe anything. Please stop the world, I want to get off.

    • by Daverd ( 641119 ) on Saturday December 11, 2021 @01:51PM (#62069721) Homepage

      Forget about the article, did you even read the summary?

      • Yes, but there are people who actually believe that shit. Can't find the original video anymore, but here [youtube.com]'s someone making fun of it.

        • It quickly becomes impossible to separate the irony vs the extra-strength "adamantly credulous" irony vs from the truly credulous (if such exist).
      • Most people don't read news articles they just scan headlines. So when big news outlets run stories with titles like this, a good number of people assume that "Birds aren't real" is an actual nutjob conspiracy not just a parody. They think "some people are fucking crazy" and go on with life. But the idea that people really believe it gets planted, and that gets perpetuated by the media, and you get sort of a self-fulfilling feedback loop started. Next thing you know, the actual crazies have got on board and
    • I would like to believe that there is intelligent life better than humans out there somewhere in the universe. I have no reason to believe this, unfortunately.

      It would be nice if we could undo the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq and put even a fraction of the lives, effort, resources, and money lost to those conflicts into education.

      • I would like to believe that there is intelligent life better than humans out there somewhere in the universe. I have no reason to believe this, unfortunately.

        I have given up on humans. It is too taxing.

      • I would like to believe that there is intelligent life better than humans out there somewhere in the universe. I have no reason to believe this, unfortunately

        As a sidenote, it wouldn't matter if there was intelligent life out there, according to this guy [imgur.com]. This is the same guy who had his head handed to him [rationalwiki.org] when he testified in a court case where he tried to claim "intelligent" designwas on par with evolution and should be taught in schools.

    • by Generic User Account ( 6782004 ) on Saturday December 11, 2021 @02:12PM (#62069809)

      15% of people have an IQ no higher than 85, below which a classification in psychiatric use called "borderline intellectual functioning" starts. Modern society has done a great job of making everyone believe they are created with the potential for greatness, but it's a lie. One in six people is in that "borderline intellectual functioning" group OR WORSE.

      • The internet was a better place when you needed an IQ above room temperature to use it.

      • by quenda ( 644621 )

        15% of people have an IQ no higher than 85, below which a classification in psychiatric use called "borderline intellectual functioning" starts.

        A measure of 85 is not so bad, depending on other factors. It is probably better than the global median (assuming your reference group is US or similar.)
        85 is around the average IQ of countries such as Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, Iran, Lebanon.
        55 million Americans fall into that category, including half of African Americans, and I don't see that many people struggling to function. Where people fall off the edge, it is usually mental illness and/or drug dependency.

        IQ does not appear to be a major factor in consp

    • Unfortunately there are people that will believe it. Remember di-hydrogen monoxide parody? There were actually so many people that believed in it that there were actual campaigns ban it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
  • ...should we consider those brainless-bodies as human?

    And, therefore, are they entitled to raise children?

  • the only reason shit like this gains any attention is because the media needs filler stories in between peddling bullshit.

  • by Revek ( 133289 ) on Saturday December 11, 2021 @01:49PM (#62069709)
    The truly stupid among us.
    • People intentionally parodying conspiracy nutbags for a laugh are stupid? Or did you not read the summary past the first paragraph?

  • Christianity is the largest Jewish cult in history.

  • ... birds do not exist and are really drone replicas installed by the U.S. government to spy on Americans.

    What in the hell are KFC and Chick-fil-a serving? It's not crunchy enough to be "drone replicas".

    And... if that's true, then the saying "tastes like chicken" *can't* be valid. Then what does everything taste like -- frogs? People? Soylent Green? Oh, wait, that's people. Hmm... Damn you Gen-Zers!!

    • by sjames ( 1099 )

      Notably, there IS a conspiracy theory that says Kentucky Fried Chicken was ordered to change their name to KFC on the grounds that they aren't serving any chicken.

      • Notably, there IS a conspiracy theory that says Kentucky Fried Chicken was ordered to change their name to KFC on the grounds that they aren't serving any chicken.

        My understanding is that the name change was to de-emphasize the "Fried" part, and sound hipper, to better appeal to youngsters and "health-conscious consumers". A quick Google search [google.com] turned up some articles that mention the theories you and I noted, but say the "official" reason is that "KFC" is shorter and easier to say. I'm bettering youngsters don't even know what KFC stand for...

        • by sjames ( 1099 )

          Oh, I have no doubt it was just a marketing thing to make it catchier or not mention fried.

          • by _merlin ( 160982 )

            I think part of it was to have simple unified global branding. The three letters "KFC" are recognisable to people in a lot of the world, and it's a lot less clutter than the unabbreviated name.

        • by _merlin ( 160982 )

          I'm bettering youngsters don't even know what KFC stand for...

          Funny thing is, they're starting to use the unabbreviated name "Kentucky Fried Chicken" more again, at least in Australia. They have the unabreviated name above the entrance door and on various pieces of packaging now. It might be a reaction to the rise in popularity of Korean fried chicken, which would share the initialism (there isn't a chain/franchise called "Korean fried chicken", but various franchises like Nene and Chicken Episode describ

    • KFC and Chickfiller are clearly not made of real chicken, so that proves it.
    • It's not tasty enough to be bird meat.
  • This will morph into a movement with people actualy believing that "birds aren't real". It's only a matter of time.

    10 years from now, we will hear about bird sanctuaries being burned, amongst other horrors, because people are trying to stop those "government drones".

      There is nothing funny about this. I bet the flat Earth and 5G tower conspiracies started out as a joke too.

  • The Flat Earth Society started as a joke, poking fun at all the idiots who believe conspiracy theories.

    Q started as a joke, poking fun at all the idiots who believe conspiracy theories.

    So in about 10-15 years, Birds Aren't Real protesters will demand their Congresspeople stop the bird drones. And then some of them will get elected on that platform.

    • by sjames ( 1099 )

      Maybe we can shoot the drones down with the secret Jewish space laser?

      • Maybe we can shoot the drones down with the secret Jewish space laser?

        The one that focuses the power of the Schwartz?

    • Where is the evidence for Q. Because it doesn't look like it started as a joke. It looks like it was started with malicious intent. I certainly have never seen direct statements from the founders saying that it is satirical bullshit like you get with this or with satire publications like The Onion.
  • I find it difficult to believe these people can't get a rifle, plunk a few pigeons or grouse out of the air, and see for themselves the flesh and blood of the animals and not microchips and wires.

    But I'm guessing their next excuse will be the government is so advanced they've created the avian version of cylons.

    • I find it difficult to believe these people can't get a rifle, plunk a few pigeons or grouse out of the air, and see for themselves the flesh and blood of the animals and not microchips and wires.

      Yes, this is what someone would think at first glance. Obviously this is America where everyone uses guns to solve problems, so to throw people off the scent, the birds scope you out and deploy remote controlled vat grown clones if you go hunting. Once any gunpowder or bullet residue gets near the electronics they decompose into water and some natural by products. They still aren’t real, I’m not an idiot.

      • Makes one wonder what these people think they are eating when they have chicken and turkey.

        • They're eating dinosaur burgers.

          And for those people who say this story has been going for 5 years, I haven't changed my signature since about the time I missed both millennium parties - the early one on New Year 1999-2000, and the actual party on New Year 2000-2001.

    • These people are either normal people just having fun with an obvious joke, or people who are not allowed to posses firearms.
    • I find it difficult to believe these people can't get a rifle,

      I'd be relieved to find out people that stupid don't have easy access to rifles...

  • The bugs are going out, poisoned and deprived of habitat by agriculture. The birds are next on the line. Get used to it.

    But this one adapts very well into our post-truth societal narrative. If the birds never were real, there is no need to be alarmed about their disappearance. I will not bat an eye if this finds it's way first into Monsanto messaging and down the line, into Beltway.

  • You just have to be angry and insane enough people will just give you what you want just so they don't look like you.

  • Next they'll be saying that half of Americans are racists, or that dudes in dresses are women or something. Anti-scientific nutcases!

  • "Democrats aren't smart enough to do all that." that's my conspiracy theory, anyway.

  • You got someone who thinks the moon landings were faked? Hit them with: “Dude, of course, the moons not even real!

    You got someone who thinks chips are going into vaccines? Hit them with: “Dude, of course, why do you think we have a chip shortage right now!

    You got someone thinking the government is using bird shaped drones to spy on people? Hit them with “Dude, of course, birds aren’t real!”
  • Operation Mindfuck is one such example. It went so horribly wrong that at the end of it the creators themselves believed it, even though they knew it was all made up.

    Making jokes is fine, but then be explicit about it
  • What protests? I see a picture of a van, with a guy standing on top of it. No one else in the photo appears to be associated with him - the few other people in the photo all look like they were walking by and decided to stare at the guy with a megaphone.

    This looks and smells suspiciously like some kids' guerrilla marketing campaign for their online t-shirt business. Do we have any evidence that these guys are actually selling "several thousand dollars a month" worth of t-shirts?

    Incidentally, I seem to recal

  • While it's fun and all, let's not underestimate the gullibility of so many people esp. in the US. It's also common to keep guns there. I bet this "movement" will lead to massive amounts of bird killing for dissection

    • While it's fun and all, let's not underestimate the gullibility of so many people esp. in the US. It's also common to keep guns there. I bet this "movement" will lead to massive amounts of bird killing for dissection

      We already have an entire holiday dedicated to eating birds. I don't think anyone will be fooled by this.

  • What would my cat think of mechanical birds?
    I know she's got good teeth and claws and goes after anything that moves but to kill and eat a drone???
  • It explains this. [slate.com]
  • A uniquely bleak time? Seriously?! Check your narcissism at the door. Try reading Anne Frank some time.

  • this reminds me strikingly of the Bielefeld conspiracy.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    Even Chancellor Merkel confirmed the non-existence of Bielefeld.

    The story goes that the city of Bielefeld (population of 333,786 as of December 2019)[4] in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia does not actually exist. Rather, its existence is merely propagated by an entity known only as SIE ("they" in German, always in block capitals), which has conspired with the authorities to create the illusion of the city's ex

  • Because bird lovers make cat lovers' lives difficult.
  • I comment on a number of Patheos blogs. Recently, they have been invaded by a stack of Qhristians, including this guy [disqus.com].

    Besides the ultra-rightwing Christianity, he is also a climate change denier, anti-vaxxer and flat-earther.

    Like the others who have come to the sites, he is also innumerate, scientifically illiterate and obviously poorly educated,

  • ... that America isn't real. Nowhere could be that stupid.

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