Six years ago, Peter McIndoe fell into character as the leader of the parody conspiracy theory called Birds Aren’t Real. It was a ruse that he started, at least initially, to grapple with the rise of conspiracy theories that he saw around him. McIndoe grew up in Arkansas, where he said he was surrounded by hyper-conservative and religious people who often espoused and subscribed to wild conspiracy theories. They’d see me in public and walk up to me with complete disdain on their face,” he said during his TED Talk. “They thought that I was a real conspiracy theorist.

Source: The Guardian April 24, 2023 11:11 UTC