Birds Aren't Real

In the late 60s and early 70s, the CIA launched a massive clandestine program to kill off America's bird population and replace it with extremely lifelike drones in order to create a continental aerial surveillance system. 

And they would've succeeded fully if not for the dedicated bravery and patriotism of the Birds Aren't Real movement. Originally founded in 1976 as a whistleblower action, the movement was forced underground in 1991 and only recently became active again. Peter McIndoe, a 23 year-old college dropout from Memphis revived the campaign, which has grown to include thousands of mostly young people concerned about government spying on citizens. The group has received coverage in recent weeks from a broad range of media outlets, including as august a publication as The New York Times.

I know what you're thinking. This is absurd. But if it can be true that Hillary Clinton led a pedophile ring out of a pizza parlor in Washington, DC and John F. Kennedy is still alive and will return to lead the nation and the 2020 Presidential election was stolen, then why can't it be true that the birds we see in the sky are surveillance drones? Checkmate, sheeple.

Okay, fine. Birds Aren't Real isn't real. Or at least it doesn't really believe that birds aren't real. Despite McIndoe's finely honed counter-arguments and the movement's elaborately detailed pastiche of evidence, the founders admit that they've got ulterior motives. Claire Chronis, a Birds Aren't Real organizer from Pittsburgh, let the NYT onto the game, “My favorite way to describe the organization is fighting lunacy with lunacy.”

Gen Z has come of age in a world beset by batshittery. QAnon counts adherents in the goddamn United States Congress. Benghazi became a ubiquitous battle cry. Millions of people think Bill Gates is trying to implant microchips through fucking vaccines for the love of God.

I applaud the effort, even as I see a fraught potential outcome. I fear an ouroboros endgame, where the joke ultimately eats itself and people that don't get the parody start to believe in it. We're a nation primed to believe conspiracy theories about government overreach. The aforementioned QAnon is a prime example of the devastating consequences that follow what when people can't tell the difference between insane conspiracy and reality, led by grifters who profit upon their ignorance. I hope the Birds Aren't Real kids can avoid that muddle and lead us out of the mire.

And so on balance, I pleased to see at least a little corner of Gen Z is fighting back, seeing absurdity abound and raising it.

God Bless those loons. Who aren't real. But are. We need them.