Birds Aren't Real

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

I will admit to being just a tad behind the times.

I am, after all, retired and in my early-to-mid-seventies, and I live in a fairly isolated location.   I don't take a newspaper or any news magazines, I don't have a cable or satellite television subscription, and the internet, my my primary lifeline to the outside world, is spotty and unreliable on its better days.

So I am often out-of-step with the rest of the world.

In fact, I am so out-of-step that I only recently became aware of the "Birds Aren't Real" conspiracy theory that has apparently been sweeping the nation and the globe for almost five years.  "Birds Aren't Real" is a big movement, really big, and I am just becoming aware of it.

"Birds Aren't Real" has become such a staple of the alternative news in America that I should not even bother sketching it out here, but I will do so anyway just on the odd chance that there are one or two other isolated old farts trying to find their way from the bedrooms to the bathrooms to the kitchens of their own homes, and back again, who have also not been made aware of this important slice of life in these United States.

The movement is built on the relatively new knowledge that birds are not real, and that they are actually feathered government drones designed to spy on an unsuspecting citizenry.  The phony birds were first detected and outed by a young man named Peter Mcindoe at a pro-and-anti-Trump rally in Memphis in early 2017, and the movement has been growing ever since that time.  It now has thousands of followers.

Mcindoe, who is now twenty-three-years-old, actually began this activity as a way of poking fun at the tendency of many Americans to wallow in conspiracies.   At that Memphis Trump rally he reportedly became so amused by all of the mindless activity going on around him, that he decided to dive in and create his own conspiracy to promote as a part of the fun.  He grabbed a sign, turned it over, and on the blank side wrote the first three words that popped into his mind:  "Birds Aren't Real!"  He then joined in the demonstrations, was filmed carrying his sign, inspired a few others - presumably some who caught the joke as well as perhaps some who did not - and the rest is history!

Now Mcindoe openly admits that "Birds Aren't Real" is a gag designed to show the idiocy of the way people blindly rush in to support the whackiest of conspiracy theories.  Over the ensuing five years since his movement first germinated in the streets of Memphis, Peter Mcindoe has fleshed out his premise with an enhanced false narrative, fake documentaries, public appearances, and a brisk trade in speciality merchandize - and he now appears to be making a comfortable living off of his joke.

And I would suggest that since the "Birds Aren't Real" phenomenon has finally reached Pa Rock on the outskirts of West Plains, Missouri, it has probably also ascended the Himalayas and reached into the jungle headwaters of the Amazon River.

Such is the power of suggestion over minds steeped in simple.

Good work, Peter.  Thank you for giving us a good reason to laugh at ourselves!