Government Spy Drones recharging their batteries
A group of demonstrators gathered in Springfield, Missouri, last week as part of a movement claiming that birds are actually drones operated by the government.
One demonstrator’s sign claimed that when birds innocuously sit on power lines, they are in fact charging their batteries. It’s unclear how many people showed up.
One video posted to social media shows crowds of people carrying signs with various slogans written on them. One read: “If it swoops, it snoops. Birds aren’t real. Wake up sheeple.”
The movement, called Birds Aren’t Real, is considered to be tongue-in-cheek, possibly making a dry mockery of genuine conspiracy theorists. Bird protection society Audubon has called the group a marketing scheme to sell related merchandise.
One prominent group member, Peter McIndoe, has represented the group in media reports a number of times. On its website, the group acknowledges him as a representative.
Peter McIndoe poses with a sign in front of a billboard that declares “Birds Aren’t Real” in Los Angeles, California
McIndoe told news site Block Club Chicago in 2018 that the campaign is meant to show “we are living in a post-truth era,” and he told Newsweek this year that the group is a “post-truth era comedy project.”
Birds Aren’t Real has been operating for years, having created a Twitter account in 2017. News stories documenting the group’s publicity stunts over the years can be traced back to 2018—though McIndoe told Newsweek in March that it has been operating since the 1950s. This video was mocked up to appear as if it was made in 1987.
Amid this week’s Springfield rally, McIndoe told reporters that he believes birds are “charging on power lines” and that “bird poop on cars is liquid tracking apparatus.”
CBS 42 reported that followers of the group are making fun of mainstream conspiracy theories such as QAnon.
Yet McIndoe doesn’t break character during media interviews. Audubon states McIndoe is a 20-year-old college student at the University of Memphis, Tennessee, and the “creative muscle” behind the group.
McIndoe defended the group’s legitimacy in a phone call with Audubon, stating: “The thought that this could be used to make a satire of a dark and tense time in American culture—I find those things to be baloney.”
As of Friday afternoon the Birds Aren’t Real group on Reddit boasted more than 385,000 members. Its Instagram account—on which there are links to the group’s merchandise page—shows it has 319,000 followers.
Source: Newsweek
I saw post-its around campus starting in early ’19. I thought I was a joke then. Good to see this is the case and to understand the basis for the joke.
With my institution allied with a group doing secret work for the military, it was curious. I thought it might be related to some real research that might be happening there.
Good joke anyway. Niel
It would have been better to post this on April 1st…
Birds are real you can even see them outside in the streets