Courtney’s Thoughts:
After all the moon talk last month, it was only natural that Barry would point out that the first moon landing is, apparently, a conspiracy theory. As in, people genuinely believe it never happened. No worries. Every good columnist eventually ends up ankle-deep in conspiracy theories. It’s basically a professional development requirement.
Sure, “the moon landing is fake” is a perfect example of institutional distrust, misunderstanding expertise, and why evidence often loses to emotion. UFO conspiracies are particularly interesting because they sit at the intersection of government secrecy, public imagination, and the internet’s endless rumor mill. And certainly, the JFK assassination remains the heavyweight champion of American conspiracy theories.
But if I was going to lean into one, I have to be team “Birds Aren’t Real” because um … they are.
The theory claims the U.S. government exterminated real birds, replacing them with surveillance drones disguised as birds. Pigeons sitting on power lines? Recharging. Bird poop? Tracking technology. “If it flies, it spies.”
Honestly, at first glance it sounds ridiculous. Then you spend five minutes online and realize it’s one of the more emotionally stable corners of the internet.
I didn’t pay much attention to birds until a few years ago.
On the morning of my father-in-law’s funeral, a cardinal followed me on my morning run. After that, a cardinal appeared almost every morning when I opened the garage door. A few weeks later, my husband was cutting the grass when one landed on the fence and squawked at him incessantly, as if trying to deliver an urgent message. We started seeing the cardinal constantly.
Then, 18 months ago, after my father died, we learned from his neighbors that he spent hours in his backyard birdwatching and photographing birds. He apparently also enjoyed terrorizing squirrels that approached his bird feeders, which explained the abundance of BBs hidden in every spare drawer in the house.
While cleaning out his home, we discovered an overwhelming variety of birdseed – all meticulously separated, labeled, and organized by type. Apparently different birds prefer different diets. Of course, the irony is that my father carefully labeled his massive birdseed collection and yet died without a will.
But I digress.
We brought my dad’s birdbath home and put it in our backyard. My husband added a few feeders because, honestly, what else were we supposed to do with the inherited birdseed inventory? A few weeks later, we buried my father’s ashes in New Jersey. When we returned home from the airport and pulled into the driveway, there were two red cardinals sitting on the fence. We looked at each other and said, “What are the chances?”
Apparently, 100%.
We couldn’t ignore the coincidence.
Then, just three months later, when my mother-in-law died – yes, it was a rough year – a third cardinal appeared in the yard.
Now, every morning they wait on the patio until we refill the feeders. They flit and float around the backyard, visit whenever we’re outside, and squawk at us when they’re hungry. Frankly, they have us trained pretty well. We even keep their food in the “special bin” of birdseed, labeled accordingly.
I’m not typically a signs-and-symbols person. I prefer evidence. But three cardinals showing up after losing three parents starts to feel statistically aggressive.
Maybe the most interesting thing about conspiracy theories isn’t whether people believe them. It’s why they want to.
Maybe we create stories because grief and chaos are hard to sit with.
Or maybe my Dad and Allen’s parents hang out in our backyard now.
Honestly, I’m okay with either explanation.
Barry’s Thoughts:
I have to admit, I should have seen this coming.
After Courtney and I shared our thoughts on this past April’s Artemis II mission, I was expecting to hear from certain sectors of my social group about how naïve I was to think that we’d ever landed on the moon.
What I wasn’t expecting was that some of them would insist the Artemis II mission was faked as well. You know, the one we all watched happen live. The one they basically livestreamed from the capsule, replaying the footage during crew appearances on every talk show on earth.
Conspiracy theories occupy a weird space in our culture. On the one hand, you have the beliefs that are pretty easily disproven. If we had faked the moon landing, the Russians A) definitely would have known, and B) definitely would not have played along. If 9/11 was an inside job, then somehow the government (a group of people famous for doing nothing right) would have had to have held an entire army of engineers, explosives experts, and skilled workers to an absurd vow of secrecy. If birds weren’t real, we’d finally be able to eat something else on Thanksgiving.
But then you have the ones that turn out to be true, or at least true enough. Remember when the internet was sure there was a shadowy cabal of elites preying on children? It wasn’t happening at a D.C. pizza place, but it was happening. If you’re old enough, you’ll remember hearing from crackpots that the second attack in the Gulf of Tonkin, which was used as justification for escalating the Vietnam war, was faked. Score another one for the crackpots.
But overall, the track record for conspiracy theories being proven right isn’t great. More importantly, their track record for being really fun to start is undeniable. And occasionally, lucrative. Go ahead and search online for ways to block 5G signals from giving you COVID. There’s a whole Amazon section devoted to Faraday hats. Do they block the insidious 5G signals from invading your brain pan and activating the trackers in your vaccines? It doesn’t matter, because these hats only exist to make someone rich.
So today, readers, I’m going to let you in on a secret that the media, the elites, and the lizard people at the highest levels of our government don’t want you to know. I’m putting my life at great risk telling you this, but the truth has to be known: Everyone you’ve ever known who speaks English with an accent is faking it. All of them. The Scots, the Irish, the English, the Australians, even the Canadians. It’s all a ruse. None of them actually talk like that. I mean, can you imagine? Try talking like a Scottish person without having a stroke first. You can’t. It’s impossible.
When Americans aren’t around? They’ll all talk in the same region-less dialect you’d find spoken on the 6 o’clock news. But as soon as someone who loves freedom shows up, suddenly they’re throwing shrimp on the barbie, acting as if the R at the end of words doesn’t exist, and using gibberish words like snogging and wanker. And the Canadians are so lazy they just throw an extra O in the word “sorry.”
Why do they do it? To make us think we talk funny. And it’s time the truth was known. So, if you’d like to purchase one of my accent-blocking earphones, send me $5 in care of this magazine. Act now and we’ll throw in the REAL footage from Artemis II, showing that it was just four people hanging out in a Winnebago for 10 days.