Shock Value

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0:44And even change you. I literally feel like I'm a different person. Yes. Do you feel that way? Ideas worth spreading. From TED and NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. I want to start with a story that, well, it might seem unbelievable. Birds aren't real! Birds aren't real! On October 15, 2022, thousands of protesters gathered in Washington Square Park in New York City. Go, Hopeers! Go, Hopeers! I get flashbacks to that moment, to that rally all the time. Because it was the most beautiful moment of my life. There were 3 ,000 people of all ages, all races, all beliefs coming together for a shared truth, something we can all agree on.

1:40We flooded the streets. We had banners, we had signs, we had our bagpiper with us just to commemorate and remember why we're there, which is because of a tragedy. because, you know, 12 billion birds died at the hands of the United States government, and they've never received justice for that. So we're here to avenge them. We're the ones around New York City! I want to take this kid! Let's go! This is Peter McIndoo. I'm the public information officer for the Birds Aren't Real movement, which has been active since 1976. Since 76, but you've not been involved since then. Oh, no, I'm 25 years old.

2:24Kind of a brief history of the movement is it started when animal rights activists and anti-surveillance activists learned about the government's plot to replace every bird with a surveillance drone. And they teamed up to create a movement called Birds Aren't Real to protest this. From 1969 through 2001, the U.S. government murdered over 12 billion birds in the American skies. Here's Peter McIndoo on the TED stage. They did this using poisonous toxins dropped from airplanes that was contagious and murdered all of the birds over the course of about 40 years. For each bird the government killed, they replaced it with a surveillance drone replica in disguise designed to spy on the American people.

3:10The proof that birds are robots is all around us if you start looking. For starters, birds charge their batteries on power lines.

3:23They also track civilians using a liquid tracking device. Over the years, as I began putting this information together, there were times I wished I never even learned this. My life would be so much easier. But I always come back to this. It is my moral obligation as one of the few privileged enough to know this to share it with you. So this whole thing, it got big. Like you went to CNN headquarters to protest their coverage of the movement. You went to Twitter headquarters to protest their logo.

4:05What's your overall strategy here? How does it work? Yeah, so we have a van that we drive around the country. We hold rallies. That's my primary responsibility as public information officer. I drive around the country in a van that we covered in decals, kind of full of facts and, you know, questions that we want people to ask when they're driving. Like, have you ever seen a baby pigeon? You ever wonder? I've never seen a baby pigeon! Why? They come out of the factory as adults! Why? Throughout my time doing Birds Not Real, I've had multiple kind of people come forward and seen some leaked documents that prove that they come out of the factory as adults.

4:47So there's no organic growth from baby to adult pigeon. So back to Washington Square, you had the van parked there. Presumably, since it was Washington Square Park in New York City, there were a lot of pigeons. There were a lot of pigeons. And any time that, you know, a flock of pigeons flew over the crowd, there would be just a cacophony of boos. It was like a heavenly choir to my ears, just hearing everyone collectively, you know, come together and let the government know that we know what they're doing and we don't like it. How shocked would you say people are when they first hear about your theory that birds aren't in fact real?

5:39Yeah, that's a tough one. unfortunately i try to tell people what's going on and they look at me like i'm a freak and those scream at me telling that to tell me i'm the i'm the problem with with this country you're so stupid but that's why i'm doing this it's clear we have a lot of work to do uh and so i'm hoping you know my grandchildren will be living in a world where being a bird shrew there's the norm you know where it's weird if you believe in birds you know that's this old that's boomer belief you know know what? You know, we know, we know the truth. So that's the world I'm working toward.

6:17And, you know, that is, that is what's, what drives me forward every day. All right. Tell us who you really are. That was really fun, by the way. That was fun. My name is Peter McIndoe, but I do not believe the birds are robots. And that is a character that I just did, that I've been playing for years and years now. I started this by accident in 2016. What? How does one do that by accident? What do you mean? It was an actual accident, I swear. I was in Memphis, Tennessee, visiting a friend. It was shortly after Trump got elected. And there was a rally happening in Memphis. It was a woman's march.

7:10And there were also people in red hats shouting things at them. And it was just kind of this chaos. And I'm not really sure why I did this. I think I was just maybe overwhelmed or maybe it felt like there was so much madness happening. but I decided to pick up a sign and write my own thing on it. So I wrote on the sign the three most random words I could think of to pair together and as you can guess they were birds aren't real. And then I started walking around chanting birds aren't real and people were asking me what does that mean? And unbeknownst to me, I was being filmed the entire time. The next week I started being sent pictures of birds aren't real spray painted on walls in Memphis and high school classrooms, writing it on the chalkboard, chanting it in the cafeteria.

8:11No, no kidding. And I was Sitting, looking at all this, and just thinking I would always regret it if I didn't try to lean into that energy that was already there. We live in an attention-seeking age with companies and influencers vying for our eyeballs, one-upping each other with outrageous and shocking images. It can feel exhausting and exploitative. But what if being jolted out of the everyday can actually be helpful? Today on the show, shock value. Ideas about how provocative stories, surprising actions, and bolts from the blue can set the stage for productive dialogue, connections between adversaries, and ultimately positive change.

9:10For Peter McIndoe, Birds Aren't Real started as a funny bit to make people laugh or to ruffle some feathers. But he decided he wanted to see how far he could take the farce. Our goal was to convince the public that our satirical movement was a real one. And see if the media would believe what we were saying. To do this, I played this character that I just showed you. We held rallies, put up billboards. We even sent the media a lot of fake evidence. We hired an old actor to pose as an ex-CIA agent, confessing to his crimes. We sent them a historic email leak called Poultry Gate that came out of the Pentagon, where we forged hundreds of fake emails exposing elites and government officials in the bird drone surveillance plot.

10:03It didn't take much to convince the media. After just one summer holding rallies, like this, it became nationally syndicated news on tons of local news stations that we were a real movement that had been around for 50 years. And there was a resurgence happening where it was coming back and there was a radical new leader, myself, bringing the movement back as the rise of conspiracy theories swept the nation. At this point, I'm sitting on my couch watching the media report on my fake movement as a real one, and figured it was probably time to come out of character. One, because we'd accomplished what we came there to do.

10:41But also, I didn't want this to snowball into anything it was never supposed to. So in 2021, I broke character, revealed the movement was a farce on the front page of the New York Times. I mean, it's pretty impressive how much you committed to the bit. And I read that it was partly because you identified with the character, because you grew up in an environment where you were exposed to some conspiracy theories. So what was your childhood like? Yeah, like you said, I grew up in kind of a hyper-conservative religious community where I was homeschooled in the outskirts of town in Arkansas, actually.

11:28And a big reason why I was homeschooled is because there's a conspiracy theory that's still very prominent to this day, that the common core school system is brainwashing children. So that's a big reason why I was homeschooled, but still had some access to the real world. And I had neighbors when I was very, very young who were Muslim. And I remember asking my parents about what they believed in. And they said that, you know, they believed in their God just like we believe in ours. And I remember thinking, oh, well, then how do we know that ours is the one, you know? And that was before I was 10.

12:13A family friend gave me a book called The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell. So that was one of the first books I read. in like my teenage years. Wow, a family member gave you that book? Well, he's a very close friend of my dad's, which I've always respected. They do have very different beliefs. I mean, that's actually a very constructive way to talk to you by giving you a copy of Joseph Campbell. Yeah. And showing you the power of story. Yes, it really was because that book talked about the power of story and myth and how maybe we weren't so different from those neighbors after all. And yeah, I think that a big part of the way that I got through that was through humor and not making fun of my surroundings, but definitely joking about them a lot.

13:03When we come back, how Peter channeled that curiosity to grow his fake movement and walk the fine line between comedy and condescension. On the show today, shock value. I'm Manoush Zomorodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

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16:35And whatever amount you can pitch in today makes a real difference. Please give today at donate.npr.org slash TED Radio Hour. Or just sign up for TED Radio Hour Plus at plus.npr.org. And thank you. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. And today on the show, shock value. Before the break, we were talking to Peter McIndoo about how he started a viral and fake conspiracy movement called Birds Aren't Real. From the start, Peter didn't want it to seem like he was making fun of anyone. You know, that was a thought from the beginning of Birds Aren't Real is that this could be a very shallow project.

17:24So I remember at the beginning looking at it, less like a conspiracy theorist satire, but more like just this absurdist belief satire that could be applied to either side of the political spectrum. And so from there, it was really interesting. When the idea was growing, it sort of became this Rorschach test for who people thought believed something ridiculous. and a lot of people think that, you know, the other side you could say or people that, you know, disagree with fundamental core beliefs of theirs are crazy or brainwashed. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of instances over the years where strangers would approach me.

18:09You know, they'd see me in public and I'd see them notice me. They'd walk up to me with complete disdain on their face. They thought that I was a real conspiracy theorist. And time and time again, they'd come up to me, and they would tell me how stupid I am. My out-of-character self may interpret these interactions as a funny response to someone that fell for the comedy project, but instead I felt the emotions of the character. I felt emboldened, and I felt sad and angry, like they didn't even take the time to know me. And in those moments when those people were talking to me, they could not have been more ineffective at what I would assume they really want.

18:55Less conspiracy theorists in the world. What if by talking to conspiracy theorists like they're ignorant and stupid, we're actually pushing them farther away from the truth that we want them to see? Because what happens when someone tells you that you're stupid, you're all wrong, you're the problem? You'll feel judged and dismissed. and most importantly, you'll feel othered, which may lead you to look for safety in those who are like-minded to do what they have been doing for you. Affirm your selfhood, give you a sense of identity, belonging. These are some of the most basic human desires. I think as the time has gone on, we started building more of a character and a person out of this Birds Aren't Real guy to where he wasn't just this random guy who shouts on the street because that's really not who conspiracy theorists are.

19:50A lot of the time, you know, they're talking about these forums that they're on online and they really don't have a lot of real life friends or community. And so as the time's gone on, it really hasn't even been about the bird robot thing at all. It's been about a character that is finding purpose and meaning and community through this idea. and that is what's making him go deeper and deeper into it. Did you ever have conversations with real conspiracy theorists? There was one time that I'm happy that it was just one time. Because at the first rally we ever held was in Springfield, Missouri. I didn't know who was going to show up.

20:35I didn't know if we'd have 20 people show up. I didn't know if we'd have a bunch of old men show up who really believed this. And so we showed up and it was just all a couple hundred actually. It's like Gen Z kids who totally understood and got the wink in the eye. And from there, that's when I learned that that really was our whole audience. But there was one time at the CNN rally actually, this guy walked up to me and starts talking about how he's a member of this very elite family with this famous name. and he was saying, you know, I love how a lot of the information you present is absurd, but it's true.

21:18But it's true. The way you present it is absurd, which is a smart way to get it out to people, but it is true. Interesting. And later that day, I got an Instagram message from this guy. I said, oh my God, it's the guy from the rally. And I opened up his profile and it was just years and years of thousands of posts of conspiracy theories. Oh. Yeah. Which I think that a lot of times it is one conspiracy theory can lead to another and then reality really can kind of unravel. And yeah, that was the first time that I'd ever experienced that. It kind of shocked me at how similarly he spoke like the character and how much he identified with it.

22:02Did you ever have anyone who was angry at you about this? about birds aren't real in general yeah like like this is not funny like conspiracy theories aren't something to laugh at yeah there have been there have been people who have said that and i really think it's important that we can talk about these things in a space that's not intense i think comedy is a very disarming way to enter a thought space you can enter this idea through something with with levity and then once we're past that then we can maybe get into some ideas in a more disarmed way. You know, obviously there are a lot of harmful conspiracy theories and that's important to talk about too, is that there are some ideas that are truly hateful and very hurtful.

22:48But I think that with the general person in our life that believes in conspiracy theories or that friend group where someone says something that makes us raise an eyebrow and responding to that in a way that isn't shaming, but that is curious about how they got there. If we can have more people talking about it like that, looking at the problem as an issue of belonging rather than belief, that might be the most productive thing we can do to fight the problem of misinformation. That's Peter McIndoo. He's the founder of the fake movement, Birds Aren't Real. We are planning on running for president ourselves as a movement, not as a person.

23:33In 2024, this is a TED Radio Hour exclusive. Oh, thank you for that. Of course. And you can see his full talk at TED.com.

23:49On the show today, shock value, which can include the irresistible desire to do something bad. And if we're going to talk about being bad, psychology professor Paul Bloom suggests that there's no better person to start with than the original bad boy, St. Augustine. So Augustine wrote a very famous book called The Confessions about 1 ,600 years ago. And it's famous because it tells the story of his youthful descent into sin and his subsequent conversion to Christianity. And he begins book two with this great line. I propose now to set down my past wickedness and a carnal corruption of my soul. Which sounds like Augustine's about to dish out some pretty racy stuff.

24:38But... The sand he spends the most time talking about is, you might think it's fairly mild. There was a pear tree near our vineyard, weighed down with fruit, alluring neither in appearance nor in flavor. And one day, 16-year-old Augustine and his buddies decided they were going to steal those pears. And we carried off from there enormous loads of fruit. Not to our meals, but rather to cast before swine. And that was it. That was it. That was the beginning and the end of the sin. But it fascinated Augustine. Because he said, look, why did I do this? Behold my heart, God. Behold my heart. I wasn't hungry.

25:25I threw most of the pears to pigs. I had nothing against the person who owned the orchard. And he concluded that he did it because he had no motivation for wickedness except for wickedness itself. If any part of one of those pairs passed my lips, it was the sin that gave it flavor. I had no motivation for wickedness except wickedness itself. I was foul and I loved it. He wanted to do it simply because it was wrong. And unlike his sexual sins, where he had motivations, he had drives, he understood what he was up to, this fascinated and horrified him. This seemed to him like a glimmer of pure evil.

26:09Paul loves stories like these. I love it because it's so paradoxical. Because sure, we sometimes do bad things. Because we think that we're actually in the right, that morality is on our side. We fight back because we're overwhelmed with anger and injustice. Or because we want to get revenge against someone who's wronged us. Usually we have some sort of reason. But stealing pears just for the hell of it? These perverse acts fall outside all of that. Perverse, as in illogical, irrational. They seem to be cases where people know something is wrong and they do it. Not despite the fact that it's wrong, but because it's wrong.

26:53So in an attempt to understand what drives us to do these thoroughly unhelpful acts, Paul launched the Perversity Project, where he asked people to submit their everyday examples of doing wrong just for the sake of it. So one of the first stories I got was, flirted with a woman's boyfriend knowing fully well he liked me. I knew I could steal him if I wanted, but I didn't want to do that. I just wanted her to feel uncomfortable whenever the three of us were in the same room. Here's Paul Bloom on the TED stage. Causing people pain is wrong, but that's exactly why I did it. And in fact, this is the plot of the Dolly Parton song, Jolene.

27:34Sometimes it's self-destructive. A young man wrote to me, ice skating on a pond, dark and frozen spot 30 yards out. Instead of avoiding it, I skate towards it, knowing but wondering, knowing but wondering, and splash. But not all the stories I got had that kind of nature. Some were a little bit more benign. Here's one of my favorites. When I was in a professional choir, at every concert I felt the desire to sing a few notes very incorrectly on purpose. To this day, I don't completely understand why. Someone else wrote me, and this is going to sweetest, sadness, little example of modest perversity.

28:08Sometimes I walk on the grass instead of the path just because I know it's wrong. You know, I think my favorite from your survey is the ice cream guy. You remember that one? This was, I think, the first entry I got from the perversity project. You hit the jackpot right from the start. I just loved it. And he wrote, on one occasion in my early 20s, I was out with a friend. He decided to get himself ice cream. And before he had a chance to try it, I stuck my finger in it. I played it off as a joke. But really, I had the sudden thought, man, it would be messed up if I just jammed my finger in his ice cream.

28:50And for full clarity, he didn't use the word messed up. I mean, there's something about a person who decides to give you an entry for your perversity project that they have a sort of self appreciation or they're trying to understand their own motivation. It does not pass them by that something wicked was within them or they wanted to shock someone. They know themselves well enough to have recognized that this was what was happening when they committed these acts. I think that's exactly right. It is the kind of sweet spot where people know this is strange. This is outside of the usual. and a lot of the perversity examples that we could talk about don't make sense to the person doing them.