It is believed that the initial plan for killing all of the birds and replacing them with flying cameras was thought up one weekend in May of 1956.

Peter McIndoe, the 23-year-old creator of the viral Birds Aren’t Real movement

In January 2017, Mr. McIndoe traveled to Memphis to visit friends. Donald J. Trump had just been sworn in as president, and there was a women’s march downtown. Pro-Trump counterprotesters were also there. When Mr. McIndoe saw them, he ripped a poster off a wall, flipped it over and wrote three random words: “Birds Aren’t Real.” – As reported by Taylor Lorenz in the New York Times towards the end of last year.

That was the beginning of a movement.

According to Lorenz, in Pittsburgh, Memphis and Los Angeles, massive billboards recently popped up declaring, “Birds Aren’t Real.” On Instagram and TikTok, Birds Aren’t Real accounts have racked up hundreds of thousands of followers, and YouTube videos about it have gone viral. In November 2021, Birds Aren’t Real adherents protested outside Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco to demand that the company change its bird logo.

The lesson: Fight lunacy with lunacy. Or, as Cameron Kasky, 21, says: the parody “makes you stop for a second and laugh. In a uniquely bleak time to come of age, it doesn’t hurt to have something to laugh about together.”

How to make the connection between Birds aren’t Real and St Patrick’s Day?

The thing is that Patrick’s Day is no longer just a day. It’s a whole week, with two, instead of the usual, one bank holiday. As a ‘thank you’ by the Government for all the great work that was done during the COVID-19 crisis.

We went out in search of a bit of ‘craic’ in Dublin’s Patrick’s Day Festival Quarter, the Collin’s Barracks.

The weather was fabulous and there were lots of people in the place. There was a group of really good dancers on the stage – Go Dance For Change -, two DJs were doing a night’s work in the middle of the day, and about two dozen food trucks sold burgers, waffles, and bratwurst dressed up as ‘hot dogs’.

The whole affair didn’t manage to create this “St. Patrick’s Day Feeling”. But it was good to be out and about and in a crowd of people again.

A walk along the boardwalk in town and sitting under our beautiful cherry blossom rounded up the week.

It mightn’t have been a real St. Patrick’s Day celebration we managed to join, but it was fun. The nice weather, the blue skies, the warmer temperatures, and the beautiful flowering trees certainly were real.

Having a bit of fun, being out and about again, brought a bit of relief to what are, for so many people, dreadful times.

Birds charge on power lines. Pigeons are liars. And the world is flat.

Think about it. And smile. I think Albert Camus would have liked this new movement.