There are the deniers about climate change, the clitoris, snow, COVID-19 and countless other topics. More and more conspiracy groups are claiming that something totally everyday, with which we are all familiar, is not real. Therefore, when in 2017 emerged the bird deniers, no one was surprised. They were even inconspicuous, with everything that surrounds us.
Basically, bird deniers claim that birds are not real. Yes, they were at some point; but, according to them, the United States Government He destroyed them all and replaced them with drones to monitor the population. Furthermore, in the process, they saved these flying animals from relieving themselves in the official cars of the Government and the CIA.
Recently, the creator of the movement, Peter McIndoehas toured throughout the United States, giving multiple talks. He has even participated in a TED Talk. We might think that the organizers have lost their minds. How can they include in their ranks a conspiracy theorist? But, in reality, McIndoe is not a denier, since his entire movement is a parody with which he tries to criticize the real conspiracy theorists who are going so far in recent years.
What do bird deniers say?
In 2017, Peter was passing by a demonstration and, suddenly, in an effort to parody the situation, he took a sign, turned it around and wrote something randomly on the back: “Birds are not real.” While brandishing his writing as a banner, he thought of new details to give it realism.
He thought that, in reality, the conspiracy began to arise in the 70s and that Kennedy was killed for opposing. Thus, everything was put on hold until, finally, Obama decided release the drones in 2001.
When he told all this nonsense to curious people and the media, they seemed to pay attention to him, so he couldn’t stop. He talked to several friends about starting a platform bird deniers. He was a college student and so were his friends. Too young to be taken seriously. So he hired some older actors to join his protests and make public statements. Everything was financed by the sale of platform merchandising. A platform whose members began to use their imagination to give more power to their story. For example, they thought that in reality, when we see bird droppings, it is a substance released by robots deliberately.
In fact, they explained that the New York taxis They are yellow so that they can be detected more easily from the air and, thus, become an easy target for excrement. Of course, in the cars of members of the conspiracy, such as the CIA or the Government, nothing at all.
With all this, demonstrations began throughout the United States. They even went to the headquarters of the old Twitter to protest its use of a bird in its logo. Could this have been Elon Musk’s reason for turning it into the current X?
A dangerous parody?
In his TED talk, McIndoe explained that he and his colleagues tried at all times to keep the details of the conspiracy secret. too convoluted to be credible. Therefore, they trust that all their followers are nothing more than members of the parody.
The problem is that they can’t be sure of it. According to a study published in 2021, all human beings believe in, at a minimum, a conspiracy theory. This is because the doubt It is something intrinsic to the human species. Evolutionarily, it has always been beneficial for us. Doubting about the safety of eating a new fruit or approaching a brightly colored animal may be the best idea. The problem is that many of those beneficial traits of our species have been taken to the extreme. We doubt everything and, furthermore, we season it with the help of confirmation bias.
This bias leads us to take only the information that interests us and focus on the details that fit a preconceived theory. For example, if we are thinking about a person, the phone rings and it is them, we will see it almost as witchcraft. But those people may have called us many other times that we have not paid attention to. That’s confirmation bias. We focus only on the detail that fits with something extraordinary.
The importance of self-deception
The same thing happens with denialist movements and conspiracy theories as with those very pertinent calls. Additionally, they are often used as self-deception to face something painful. For example, climate change deniers prefer to think that it is not true that our children will inherit a suffocating and destructive planet because of our own actions. They look for any slightest sign that confirms their bias and make excuses for it.
With the movement of birds, it is more difficult for this to happen. However, it is impossible to be sure that the bird deniers are all false. The fear of the Government monitoring us is very common, not only in the United States. Also in the rest of the world. Therefore, it could be that some of the people who joined the demonstrations really believed it.
The time has come to tell the truth publicly to prevent this from happening. They already did it years ago. But now, with events like TED talksthe movement’s creator hopes everyone knows that bird deniers were devised as a critique of these increasingly common conspiracies.
Ideally, they would tell us that the deniers of snow, the clitoris, or even the Middle Ages were also joking. But, unfortunately, it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.
