The Way to Combat Conspiracy? Irony

“Birds Aren’t Real” May Be Gen Z’s Operation Mindfuck 2.💀

Jamie Cohen
GEN
Published in
4 min readDec 17, 2021

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Photo of a Birds Aren’t Real sticker on the back of a street sign.
“Birds Aren’t Real Sticker — Colorado” by Tony Webster is licensed under CC BY 2.0

The post-truth era is fueled by nonstop information flows, historic access to knowledge, and unprecedented precarity of trust. On top of that, misinformation and conspiracy theories are amplified by our social media platforms. Even our news and our feeds have become so hyperpartisan they lead to unease and…

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Jamie Cohen
GEN
Writer for

Digital culture expert and meme scholar. Cultural and Media Studies PhD. Internet studies educator: social good, civic engagement and digital literacies