is he succeeding in that effort? yes. he is succeeding. i spoke to, you know, dozens of people about this, including a disinformation researcher. pretty much no one affiliated with the movement really believes that birds are not real. it s become kind of a meme. believes birds are not real. it s become kind of a meme. and, you know, it seems to be all in good fun, so i don t think they ve attracted any kind of negativity so far. one of the organizers you spoke with described it as fighting lunacy with lunacy. and i wonder when you talked with disinformation experts if they think that that is a strategy that could apply more broadly. yeah, they actually said it was a really successful strategy. it s kind of instead of, you know, emotionally counterprotesting or trying to give facts to kind of counter a lot of these conspiracies almost stepping away and laughing at it and pointing at the lunacy allows there to be this
fighting lunacy with lunacy. and i wonder when you talk with disinformation experts if they think that is a strategy that could apply more broadly. yeah. they actually said that it was a really successful strategy. it is kind of instead of counter trying to give facts to counter a lot of these conspiracies, almost laughing at it allows this to be de-escalation. it s been really successful. the birds aren t real group, these activist members of the organization that go out and protest, they have been really successful at de-escalating a lot of conflicts. just recently one in cincinnati where anti-abortion activists were there rallying around this texas abortion ban. the birds aren t real sort of movement took over that counterprotest and ended up tee escalating. do you see them becoming a bigger political force?
has been going on about four years now. it has gotten to the point where the movement has hundreds of thousands of young followers. the whole thing is sort of aimed at poking fun at misinformation and conspiracy theories and media illiteracy. i think he feels like now is the time to come clean and let people know, hey this is all a joke. he doesn t want harm to come from the movement. you talk about fighting lunacy with lunacy. do you think it s working, has worked or is starting to work? yeah. it seems to be working. i mean, members what have they call the bird brigade, which are followers of the birds aren t real movement have been successfully showing up and counter protesting a lot of different types of qanon rallies, white lives matter rallies, anti-abortion rallies. they kinds of join forces with