It would’ve been a funny story to tell friends if that was the end of the whole Birds Aren’t Real spectacle, but Peter McIndoe realized that there were ways to take it further. According to The New York Times, the Birds Aren’t Real movement harnessed the internet and members of Generation Z — who themselves grew up using the internet at a moment in time when there was another spike in conspiracy theories — to spread the tongue-in-cheek conspiracy theory.
The Birds Aren’t Real movement spread rapidly. “So I’m getting pictures sent to me of Birds Aren’t Real graffiti and Birds Aren’t Real chalkboards and seeing you know chants in cafeterias and, you know, stadiums like ‘Birds Aren’t Real’ at high schools,” McIndoe told “60 Minutes.” Pouncing on their spur-of-the-moment goof’s newfound internet fame, McIndoe enlisted a friend to help him craft a backstory explaining the faux-history of Birds Aren’t Real.
Birds Aren’t Real became so popular that McIndoe decided to drop out of school to pursue his new internet enterprise, though explaining the choice to his parents was a little difficult. “I was trying to describe to them it could be a very interesting art project, sort of like a mirror to, you know, just the seemingly exponentially growing absurdity of the world and America,” McIndoe said in his “60 Minutes” interview. “And, like, if we can match that with a character in a living world, blah, blah, blah. And they’re just lookin’ at me, like, ‘Please stick with the psychology degree,’ you know.”
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