‘Birds Aren’t Real’ Founder Tells Howard Stern How His Movement is ‘Holding Up a Mirror to the Lunacy’ of Conspiracy Theorists

Peter McIndoe, the founder of the viral Birds Aren’t Real movement, spoke to Howard Stern about the purpose of his satirical conspiracy theory.

“It was sort of this idea of like holding up a mirror to the lunacy,” he told Stern and Robin Quivers over the phone. “Kind of going and sort of diffusing the tension or diffusing the situation non-aggressively through comedy.”

McIndoe, a 23-year-old living in Memphis, created the movement in 2017 when he showed up at a Donald Trump rally with a sign that read, “Birds Aren’t Real.”

He went on to pose as a conspiracy theorist and staunch believer of the movement he created, attracting both true supporters and fans looking to poke fun at the theory.

“Starting off, the goal was to kind of make this fictional character that lives in the real world, and I wanted kind of people to process the character as a real person,” he told Stern. “I spent four years in character. Local media reported on Birds Aren’t Real as having existed since 1976.”

According to the movement, which has chapters across the nation, the government has replaced every single living bird with robotic replicas after “a poisonous toxin dropped from crop-dusting airplanes” caused a bird genocide between the years of 1959 and 2001.

Why robot birds? To spy on United States citizens, of course. Oh, and they recharge on power lines.

“I think that in any time of real lunacy or madness as a civilization, like where it seems like America is right now, I think that’s when stuff like comedy is more important than ever,” McIndoe told Stern. “I think that Birds Aren’t Real kind of gives people a way to process kind of the madness of like the post-truth era …  in a way that’s really disarming and allows them to kind of laugh at the madness rather than be overcome by it.”

Watch above, via YouTube.