What would you do if I told you that every movement you make is being recorded? I am not talking about being recorded by your computer or your phone but by someone who you would never suspect. It could be someone that you welcomed into your home with open arms; someone who is now a critical part of your family. Or, perhaps, it is someone who wakes you everyday with their sweet melodies. However it is that you encounter them, they are a part of your day to day life and cannot be escaped no matter what you do. These creations are government surveillance drones that are used to keep watch over the country, however, you may know them by their common name: bird. Others think, however, that this “movement” is an enormously elaborate form of satire that is used to ease political tension. This essay will be dissecting a protest video posted by the “Birds Aren’t Real” youtube page and discussing how it is an effective example of a rhetorical situation.
Brought to popularity in 2017 by Peter McIndoe, the “Birds Aren’t Real” movement commits to informing the public of the bird genocide and their replacement by government surviellance drones (Alfonso; McIndoe, “Who Are We?”). McIndoe claims, however, that he is not the founder and that the campaign has been around since 1973; despite this assertion, McIndoe created the website “birdsarentreal.com” with the purpose to inform people about the history and the future of the movement. In the history section of the website, McIndoe recounts that Allen Dulles, the Director of the C.I.A. from 1953 to 1961, first proposed the idea of flying surveillance systems to President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956. It is mentioned that Dulles decided to replace all birds with drones after becoming increasingly infuriated by the immense amount of pigeon feces found on his car. Allen Dulles, supposedly, assassinated hundreds of millions of birds through the use of a specially crafted poison that only affected avians. The poison was dropped from the sky through the use of specially designed planes, and when the poison touched the birds they would be infected and spread the disease to other avian species. It is reported that the creatures would completely decompose, within 24 hours of coming into contact with the poison. The deceased birds were then replaced with identical drones; some of the drones had the purpose to kill real birds so the government could speed up the efforts in replacing all the avians in America. McIndoe then continues to inform the reader on how the first whistleblower, whose name is not mentioned, of the bird genocide spread the word with the help of a young man named Clark Griffin. Together they informed the public of the operation and held rallies every year from 1974 to 1993 in Washington D.C. It is said, however, that all footage from the rallies were destroyed by government officials. Coming to the end of the movement, in 1991 Clark Griffin disappeared in the middle of a protest never to be seen again. After this event, the movement slowly tapered out and was brought to an end by the lack of leadership and the growing threat of the government (McIndoe, “The History”).
With the background of the movement established, it is time to break down the video in question that was posted on the “Birds Aren’t Real” youtube channel in 2018 and establish why it can be defined as satire. Declercq defines satire “…as a genre with the purpose to critique and entertain (with the qualification that these purposes necessarily interact, although neither is wholly instrumental to the other).” The video starts with Peter McIndoe sitting under a bridge claiming that he was relaxing at home “…when the sound of cars from [his] roof brought [him] to [the] disturbing realization [that] not everyone has access to social media…” (00:00-00:07) like he does. He then goes on to claim that he is “privileged” while holding an Etch A Sketch with the picture of the “Birds Aren’t Real” instagram page layered on top and acting as if it were an ipad or iphone (00:07-00:09). These first nine seconds immediately establish a comedic aspect to video. This is evident by the fact that McIndoe is clearly well groomed and therefore, likely, lives in a real home somewhere and not under a bridge. He also could have used real technology rather than a kids toy to show that he is fortunate. Continuing with the video, McIndoe decides that he must present “…the sheeple with the truth where they can’t avoid it, rush hour traffic” (00:20-00:24). This statement is key because he calls the civilians sheeple; this is defined as a derogatory term that is typically used to refer to people who are foolish (“Sheeple”). This is the first indication that there is a larger purpose behind the video than just entertainment. McIndoe proceeds to yell at civilians assertions such as “the birds know your social security number,” “you have no excuse now,” and “pigeons are liars” (00:25-00:32), while carrying around protest signs that are painted with similar messages. This begins to cultivate the idea that the video is critiquing people’s intensity in relation to politics. He continues to roam around yelling at people when he is approached by a police officer. McIndoe claims, in the voiceover, that the government is attempting to silence them. During the interaction, he asks the officer if she was sent by Hillary Clinton, and when she hesitates, he states that he understands that she can not speak of it. He then ends the video by yelling “freedom of speech” (McIndoe 00:45-01:00). McIndoe’s actions and interactions act as a direct parody of real life protests that can be seen on the news today. All of the aspects mentioned above solidify the idea that the object of satire in the video is how people get so worked up and emotionally involved in politics. After watching the video, it could be theorized that McIndoe hopes people will calm down and become less intense in regards to politics.
It is important to form a clear background of the movement’s history, and the video being analyzed, so that the reader can gain a better understanding of how complex this rhetorical situation is. Bitzer defines rhetorical situations as something that “…alters reality by bringing into existence a discourse of such a character that the audience… is so engaged that it becomes the mediator of change” (4). What makes situational rhetoric different from normal rhetoric is that the “…discourse comes into existence because of some specific condition or situation which invites utterance” (Bitzer 4). Bitzer also continues to claim that there are three key elements that a rhetorical situation must have: “exigence”, “audience”, and “constraints” (6). These three elements, and the definition of rhetorical situations, can all be seen in the video “STREET PREACHING” by Peter McIndoe. What is particularly unique about this video, though, is that, unlike other rhetorical situations, there are two exigences and two audiences. This is because of the complex nature of the movement and how some people see it as a legit conspiracy theory and how others see it as a form of satire. It is important to establish that, based on the evidence provided from the video, this essay will be focusing on satire being the real purpose behind the movement with conspiracy theories being a consequence of it. With that said, both play important roles in the video, and as such each will be discussed in a viewpoint as a rhetorical situation of their own.
As previously stated, “STREET PREACHING” by Peter McIndoe has two exigences. The first one, which will be called the fake exigence, is that birds are government surveillance systems that are being used to spy on the people of America. In order to battle this issue, McIndoe takes to the streets to inform the public of the exigence. This is evident by the fact that in the video McIndoe is screaming at onlookers, and the camera, “you filming me doesn’t scare me. The birds do that to me everyday anyway” (00:33-00:36). Also, when asked what he is doing, by a pedestrian, he replies with “spreading the feathered gospel, ma’am” (McIndoe 00:39-00:41). These two statements make it clear that he is trying to spread the word about how the government is spying on people with birds. This was not always the purpose of the campaign, though. In the “Who are we?” section of the movement’s official website birdsarentreal.com, Peter McIndoe claims that their “…initial goal was to stop the genocide of real birds,” but when all the birds were eliminated, they changed their purpose to informing the public of how these creatures that looked eerily similar to birds were actually surveillance robots for the government (McIndoe, “Who Are We?”). The second, and true, exigence of the video is based on reversing and correcting the stress and hostility caused by the intense 2018 midterm elections. McIndoe decides to do this in the form of laughter that is produced from a satirical video. It has already been explained, in a previous paragraph, how the video is satirical with the object of satire being how people get worked up and emotionally involved in politics. It is also common knowledge that satire is meant to be comedic in nature which, also as mentioned in a previous paragraph, is evident in McIndoes work. But why mention the 2018 midterm elections? Why not just say politics in general? Well, the first video ever posted on the “Birds Aren’t Real” youtube channel was of McIndoe preaching to people on the street during a women’s rights march. This demonstrates that he finds inspiration for his content from recent political events. The largest and most recent political event, in the case of the video in question, was the 2018 midterm elections. What made the election so influential was that the House of Representatives was taken back by the Democrats; this, as a result, caused a panic among Republicans as their power, and President Donald Trump’s power, decreased substantially (Collinson). One month afterwards, McIndoe posted the video being analyzed in today’s essay on the “Birds Aren’t Real” youtube channel. The fake and true exigences, when put together, act almost as a summary of the video and of the movement as a whole.
The audience of a rhetorical situation must be able to, and willing, to take action based off of the exigence (Bitzer 7). In the case of the fake exigence, the fake audience would be conspiracy theorists. This is the case because studies show that people who believe in at least one conspiracy theory are more likely to believe in other theories (Goertzel 731). Conspiracy theorists would also act on the false exigence by spreading the word on social media with websites like Reddit being places where they converse and share their opinions on theories. The true audience would be anyone with a taste for satire. In this case acting on the exigence would be done by laughing which is why the audience for the true exigence is so broad. However, the audience could be narrowed down a little as it can be theorized that the audience is mostly made up of people who had a well-rounded education or who went to postsecondary school. The reasoning behind this is that those with thorough schooling have a deeper understanding of satire and what it is compared to people who never learned about it. With all of that said, both conspiracy theorists and those with a taste for satire play a key role in the formation of the “Birds Aren’t Real” community.
Similar to the exigence and audience, the constraints of the rhetorical situation can be grouped into general constraints and constraints that relate to the true exigence. Most of the general constraints can be summarized as a lack of accessibility of the video. The video is not made with the deaf and hard of hearing community in mind. This is evident as the audio quality of the video is not very good; this is a result of McIndoe being filmed on the side of the road without a microphone to solely pick up on his voice. Another example is that McIndoe did not create his own captions for the video; this results in youtube using auto generated captions which are not very accurate and will, occasionally, completely miss words. These two small, but important, details result in creating confusion or full exclusion of the deaf and hard of hearing community. Another way that there is a lack of accessibility is that the video can only be found on the internet. This creates a problem with people who do not have access to the internet or people who have trouble navigating it. This is especially an issue because it can cause confusion for onlookers of the stunt, with aforementioned limits, on whether McIndoe was being serious about birds not being real. Constraints that relate to the true exigence can be summarized as the ignorance of others. For example, people who take everything at face value will miss the satire of the video and therefore miss the true message. This is what leads to conspiracy theories which confuse the public of the intentions of the video. Although in many ways this acts as a constraint, it also acts as an affordance. This is because with the rise of conspiracy theories comes an increase in clout through news channels and articles that report the story. With the increase in coverage, the video will be able to reach more people and gain a larger audience. A similar affordance that also relates to the spread of the video is the share button on youtube. This button makes it convenient and quick to share the video with others and, again, create a larger audience. Between the constraints and affordances, each plays an important role in rhetorical situations.
Is the “Birds Aren’t Real” movement a real conspiracy theory or all an elaborate form of satire? Perhaps we will never get an answer. However, what can be confirmed is that the video “STREET PREACHING” by Peter McIndoe is, although not entirely effective, an excellent and humorous example of a rhetorical situation. The reasoning that the video is not effective has nothing to do with the production quality or the content but with the lack of viewership. With all of the popularity that surrounded the movement in 2018 and 2019, the video that was analyzed in this essay got a mere 6,589 views with only 404 of those viewers actually giving the video a thumbs-up (McIndoe, STREET PREACHING). Despite not being entirely effective, the short film still presents an excellently produced, comedic video with the intent of making its viewers self reflect on their actions in the past, present, and future.