Ask Peter McIndoe, 23, a former psychology student. He’s an expert on this. Not intentionally.
After the 2016 election, which Trump won, there were protests. During the Women’s March, McIndoe saw “counterprotesters, who were older, bigger white men” who he felt “had no business being there.” So he decided to protest the counterprotest, and created a sign saying, “Birds aren’t real.”
He would later say, “It’s not like I sat down and thought I’m going to make a satire. I just thought: ‘I should write a sign that has nothing to do with what is going on.’” Something absurd. Remember, this kid (he was 18 then) was a psychology student. Maybe he was subconsciously designing a psychology experiment for extra credit.
Boy, did it acquire a life of its own.
The trouble started when the counterprotesters asked him about his sign, and improvising, he told them the “deep state” had destroyed America’s birds and replaced them with surveillance drones. As in, “Every bird you see is actually a tiny feathered robot watching you.”
Uh-oh.
“Someone was filming him and put it on Facebook, the Guardian says, and soon it had “hundreds of thousands of followers.” McIndoe, back at college, saw “videos of people chanting: ‘Birds aren’t real,’ at high-school football games.” Deciding to play along, he went on radio shows to explain “in total seriousness” how these robot birds were watching everyone all the time, and matter-of-factly described “the genocide of the real birds.”
The Guardian continues, “That day of the Women’s March, as McIndoe ad-libbed his conspiracy to whoever would listen, he had no plan.” He says, “I was just saying things that were the funniest thing to me at the time.” To the wrong people, it turned out.
It would demonstrate “how divisive conspiracy theories are,” and that people who believe in them “live in another world, where any wild theory flies and even the most fleeting attempt to fact check it or test it against logic (if birds have been destroyed, who’s eating all the worms?) marks you out as a brainwashed liberal.”
McIndoe thinks he understands why this happens. He grew up in a church community where beliefs are based on faith. Religious folks often seek “one single theory that explains everything.” That, the Guardian writer thinks, “softens up the brain,” making them susceptible to conspiracy theories. The leap from religion to QAnon turned out to be a short one.
As for how he sees the world now, he says, “I don’t think the madness is going to necessarily end. I think the lunacy is going to become more intense.” I would drop the word “necessarily.” It’s been going on forever, so there’s no reason to think it’ll ever end. Gullibility is deeply embedded in human nature. In 1841, Scottish author Charles Mackay published his famous book, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, a history of sorts up to that time. (Get a copy here.) That history, of course, hasn’t stopped.
Mass delusion is thriving today in America, among other places.
Faith versus fact is central to many of America’s most virulent divisions. To people who believe Hillary Clinton is running a pedophile ring from the basement of a pizza parlor, it doesn’t matter that the building in question doesn’t have a basement. Likewise, Trumpers believe “stolen election” conspiracy theories on faith, and aren’t troubled by the lack of any evidence of election fraud. This also explains why no amount of scientific evidence can change the minds of Covid-19 deniers who insist masks and vaccines don’t work and quack treatments do.
All humans have a rational side and an emotional side, and usually one is dominant. Putting faith in things that aren’t true (and leaders who lie) can fulfill the emotional needs of even people who know they aren’t true. “Birds aren’t real” resonates with people who need to believe their government is watching them, while a rational person would ask, “What interest would the CIA have in them?”
It’s not like the CIA wants people who’d swallow a college student’s made-up satirical conspiracy theory operating their robotic spy birds.