Birdwatching Goes Both Ways: An Analysis of Birds Aren't Real

From Introduction: 'In the summer of 2019, a billboard loomed over Memphis, Tennessee with a simple message: “Birds Aren’t Real.” A representative of the eponymous organization, appearing on local news, maintained that leaders in the U.S. government had slaughtered all birds and replaced them with surveillance drones beginning in the 1950s. Across the country, Birds Aren’t Real (BAR) stickers, shirts, and hats have spread like wildfire among college students. What can the popularity of such an organization teach us about youth response to the expanding surveillance state? Examining primary documents promulgated by the organization itself, college newspaper coverage of the organization, and interviews with its members, this paper argues that the conspiratorial thinking present in BAR serves as a hyperbolized way for young people to satirize the realities of the surveillance state. An analysis of these sources and Queer theory of performativity shows that BAR seeks to commodify conspiratorial thinking through its focus on selling merchandise while strategically deploying discursive practices of activist organizations, publicity efforts especially at colleges, and general fears about the surveillance state. The success of BAR commodifies youth resentment to heightened surveillance, likely prompting greater political cynicism among its followers, and its performative nature seeks to undermine state surveillance while functionally normalizing its intrusion into everyday privacy.'