Get the latest tech news
Bird Aren't Real: What one man learned when he made up a conspiracy theory
The performance artist behind "Birds Aren't Real" believes that people fall for conspiracy theories because they feel disconnected from society.
Thus began a real-world social experiment about the way misinformation can be intentionally sparked, then fanned by committed actors wielding cherry-picked evidence, and ultimately catch fire on the internet, where anyone with enough slick videos and invented facts can make anything look real. McIndoe continued to channel that character into “Birds Aren’t Real: The True Story of Mass Avian Murder and the Largest Surveillance Campaign in U.S. History,” which he wrote with co-author and co-conspirator Connor Gaydos. Like many conspiracy theories, there is a grain of truth that is being torqued out of proportion, in that McIndoe lists a whole bunch of real — and sketchy — things the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency did that make killing birds seem slightly more reasonable in comparison.
Or read this on Hacker News
