Sitting on a red chair under the bright glare of the stage lights of a Memphis and Midsouth news channel was Peter McIndoe, the unofficial spokesperson of Birds Aren’t Real. The reporters laughed at him as they grilled him about his beliefs. “So this whole Birds Aren’t Real thing, this is really satire. You don’t really believe this happened, correct? This is a satirical campaign to make the point that.. What?”

Birds Aren’t Real members have been under attack ever since the movement took flight for their “outlandish ideas” and “lies.” These alien views have now taken residence at Shorewood within a flock of nonconformists whose aim is to open people’s eyes to the truth about our government. They have been placing posters and stickers all over school, hoping that it will raise awareness regarding the lies we are being told on a daily basis.

At first glance, the official Birds Aren’t Real website seems to be only for selling merchandise, but at the bottom there is a link to another page of their site that has three lengthy chapters filled with information on when this corruption started and how. They start off by saying, “In 1947 the C.I.A. was founded, its sole responsibility to watch and survey tens of thousands of Americans suspected of doing communist things,”

McIndoe, who claims “not to be the leader” of the movement, has done countless numbers of interviews. Some on TV news stations and others on the official Birds Aren’t Real YouTube channel where they supply completely credible sources for their information like a self acclaimed ex-CIA agent that claims to have destroyed every single piece of evidence left from the robot bird experiments.

An anonymous follower of McIndoe and member of Birds Aren’t Real at Shorewood offered some new insights into the controversial topic. The significance of this movement is reflected by one quote that is at the core of the community. “You’ve probably heard ‘stay woke’ before.  People need to open their eyes to what’s happening around us that affects us directly,” said the student Birds Aren’t Real supporter who wished to remain anonymous.

A large part of this movement is the protest against the unjustified killings of millions of birds. This started in 1963 with a prototype called “the Turkey X500- a robot that specialized in killing larger birds,” and caused a backlash with animal rights activists. With the issue of compromised privacy already on peoples’ minds, they found this movement was killing two birds with one stone. Not literally.

The movement’s mission states that the government needs to have more transparency for the protection of the people. “The movement Birds Aren’t Real is to raise awareness that birds such as seagulls and crows are government surveillance drones. We have a small group of activists here at Shorewood who are trying to raise awareness by putting out posters of Birds Aren’t real. We don’t want the government spying on us and not telling us with drones.”

A lot of people see these posters as a joke, but while people are laughing, the surveillance drones roam free, ready to invade privacy, this student said. “We just want to raise awareness to the cause.”