Birds Aren't Real: The True Story of Mass Avian Murder and the Largest Surveillance Campaign in US History

by Peter McIndoe, Connor Gaydos

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Are you ready for the truth? [Insert laugh track here.] Birds are nothing more than a Deep State conspiracy. This hilarious trip down a wormhole of alternate facts will have you falling over laughing (or might just blow your mind).

The true story of the greatest conspiracy in US history—and how to fight back.

Have you ever seen a baby pigeon? You haven’t, have you? No one has, not in many, many years. They used to be everywhere. You couldn’t walk out of your front door in New York City in the 1930s without seeing dozens of those little guys scurrying around. Today, there are millions of grown up pigeons in New York, but not a baby pigeon to be seen. That’s because they come out of the factory as adults.

This is one of the many smoking guns of the bird drone surveillance crisis. Since 1959, the Deep State has mercilessly slaughtered over 12 billion birds and replaced them with identical drones that are designed to spy on private citizens and report their every action directly to the government. From pet canaries to Sesame Street, the shadowy figures that pull the strings have infiltrated every aspect of our society, making a mockery of civil liberties while the American people live in blissful ignorance. Until now.

In Birds Aren’t Real, whistleblowers Peter McIndoe and Connor Gaydos trace the roots of a political conspiracy so vast and well-hidden that it almost seems like an elaborate hoax. These hero Bird Truthers have risked life and limb to compile and disseminate a treasure trove of information about the origins of the surveillance crisis, its spread, and the patriots who are on the front lines today, raising awareness and working to reclaim America as the land of the free. This urgent manifesto features a host of useful illustrations, activities, and leaked classified documents that will convince even the most outspoken skeptic that birds aren’t real. The truth is out there: will you stand and fight before it’s too late?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250288905
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/04/2024
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272

About the Author

Peter McIndoe is a son, a scholar, and Public Information Officer for the world-renowned Birds Aren’t Real movement. Peter came to the truth in 2017 through a combination of prophetic dreams and independent research. He has spent the past 7 years of his life on the road, campaigning in different cities, growing the movement through rallies and grassroots organizing. He’s been featured on 60 Minutes, and the front page of the New York Times. Peter’s efforts have been credited with growing the movement to millions, and will possibly save the world. He currently resides in Brooklyn, New York.

Connor Gaydos was born in an undisclosed location far from civilization. His father Clark was the founder of Birds Aren’t Real in the 1970s, and after his disappearance in the mid 90s Connor was raised by his uncle Leon. In 2016, Connor ran away from Leon and has since given his entire life to you, the people of America. He knows the risk he’s taking by attaching his name to this book, and asks that if you work at the CIA and are offended by what’s inside, you take a few deep breaths and spare his life.

Editorial Reviews

04/01/2024

In this sly debut political parody, McIndoe and Gaydos offer up a fictional backstory to their satirical conspiracy theory, widely popular online, that the U.S. bird population has been replaced by birdlike CIA drones. The joke, which pokes fun at several things at once—unhinged conspiracy theorists, actual government malfeasance, and how genuinely weird birds are—begins here as a tongue-in-check history of the U.S. surveillance state. Presented in the form of an exposé (narrated by a QAnonesque “Patriot”), the story starts with CIA chief Allen Dulles deciding to kill every bird in America after one shits on his car, and folding the project into a plan to surveil leftists. From there, military aviation contractor Boeing is enlisted to poison the birds, and hippies are tricked into constructing the replacement robot birds by CIA infiltrators who claim the drones will deliver food aid to Vietnam (this is meant as a sendup of real-life MKULTRA experiments: “If they told anyone... it would sound like the deranged ramblings of a braindead psychonaut”). Other chapters elaborate additional elements of the joke (in their “bird drone field guide,” the authors get back to making fun of birds; for example, seagulls are said to habitually steal half-eaten food because they are actually collecting DNA from saliva). It’s a silly and winning spoof. (June)

Publishers Weekly

“More than a million people have become followers of a conspiracy theory that birds aren’t real…[the movement] mirrors some of the absurdity that has taken flight across the country.” —60 Minutes

“[A] meta conspiracy movement, set to out-conspire all other conspiracies.” —Vice

“This is Gen Z’s attempt to upend the rabbit hole with absurdism.” —New York Times

“The most perfect, playful distillation of where we are in relation to the media landscape we’ve built but can’t control…It’s a conspiracy-within-a-conspiracy.” —The Guardian

From the Publisher

2024-03-15
Two young writers satirize the American obsession with conspiracy theories by offering “insights” into a fictional governmental plot.

During the Trump era, the far-right fringe groups, including QAnon—which posited that elite Satan-worshipping pedophile democrats controlled politics and the media—developed a robust following, to the chagrin of many, including then teenage McIndoe. He responded by disseminating a joke conspiracy theory claiming that, in the 1970s, the U.S. government “killed off the entire bird population and replaced them with robotic bird replicas that are used for mass surveillance.” In this book, McIndoe and Gaydos move to the next parodic extreme by offering an in-depth history of this fictional movement—which they claim has been “brutally suppressed” by the government—and other absurdist gems, including a field guide to major bird drones such as pigeons, seagulls, bluebirds, and vultures and a “real history of America” that claims the apex of the American Revolution was in 1812, when “Washington led his colonial army across the Delaware ocean.” For fellow “Bird Truthers” seeking to spread the word, the authors deliver sage advice on everything from how to hold rallies—complete with instructions on ways to make the best use of speeches, moments of silence, and bagpipes—to how to hypnotize every member of the armed forces for effective government overthrow and how to create shelters and societies by digging interconnected backyard holes. Illustrated throughout with black-and-white sketch-style drawings, the text presents its own alternative-fact universe that ridicules the bizarre distortions that have become an embedded part of American sociopolitical reality. “This book,” write the authors, “is intended for readers with an IQ over 250….If your IQ is under 250, please close this book immediately and read something more suited to your sensibilities, such as Goodnight Moon or Frog and Toad.”

Quirky and humorously provocative.

Kirkus Reviews