![]() The effort has been cathartic for young people including Heitho Shipp, 22, a Pittsburgh resident. It’s a way to laugh at the madness rather than be overcome by it.” “It’s a safe space for people to come together and process the conspiracy takeover of America. “Everything we’ve done with Birds Aren’t Real is made to make sure it doesn’t tip into where it could have a negative end result on the world,” he said. McIndoe said he kept the concerns top of mind. “Allowing people to engage in collaborative world building is therapeutic because it lets them disarm conspiracism and engage in a safe way.” “You have to weigh the potential negative effects with any of this stuff, but in this case it is so extremely small,” said Joshua Citarella, an independent researcher who studies internet culture and online radicalization in youth. McIndoe began watching Philip DeFranco and other popular YouTubers who talked about current events and pop culture, and went on Reddit to find new viewpoints. In high school, social media offered a gateway to mainstream culture. He read books like “Remote Control,” about what it said were hidden anti-Christianity messages from Hollywood. He was home-schooled, taught that “evolution was a massive brainwashing plan by the Democrats and Obama was the Antichrist,” he said. For his first 18 years, he grew up in a deeply conservative and religious community with seven siblings outside Cincinnati, then in rural Arkansas. There is growing evidence that MDMA - the illegal drug known as Ecstasy or Molly - can significantly lessen or even eliminate symptoms of PTSD when the treatment is paired with talk therapy.TikTok choreography, dancing umpires, a ballet-trained first-base coach: The Savannah Bananas, a collegiate summer league baseball team, has amassed a following by leaning into entertainment.Using the Vatican’s own archives, a soft-spoken scholar has become arguably the most effective excavator of the church’s hidden sins.The Great Read More fascinating tales you can’t help but read all the way to the end. In a uniquely bleak time to come of age, it doesn’t hurt to have something to laugh about together.” “A lot of people in our generation feel the lunacy in all this, and Birds Aren’t Real has been a way for people to process that.”Ĭameron Kasky, 21, an activist from Parkland, Fla., who helped organize the March for Our Lives student protest against gun violence in 2018 and is involved in Birds Aren’t Real, said the parody “makes you stop for a second and laugh. “Birds Aren’t Real is not a shallow satire of conspiracies from the outside. By cosplaying conspiracy theorists, they have found community and kinship, Mr. So for members of Gen Z, the movement has become a way to collectively grapple with those experiences. Some have relatives who have fallen victim to conspiracy theories. Most Birds Aren’t Real members, many of whom are part of an on-the-ground activism network called the Bird Brigade, grew up in a world overrun with misinformation.
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