Skip to main content

This very distressed purple bird is derailing conversations across Facebook

This very distressed purple bird is derailing conversations across Facebook

/

His name is Trash Dove

Share this story

Seemingly out of nowhere, every post on The Verge’s Facebook page (and several other Facebook pages, including Vox, Polygon, Business Insider, and I Fucking Love Science) has been flooded with GIFs of a purple bird who is not happy about what is going on. One New York Times article has a comment thread in which one person posted the purple bird GIF and then replied to his own comment with the same GIF 92 times. It’s sort of hard to have a conversation about the news through all these weird lil’ birds!

In case you were curious about him, the angry fellow is from a Facebook sticker set called “Trash Doves” that went viral in Thailand earlier this month. Created by Florida artist Syd Weiler, the stickers debuted at the end of January.

The rise of Trash Dove has already been documented by the meme experts at Know Your Meme, which traces the viral origins back to a Facebook video of a dancing cartoon cat hanging out with the head-banging Trash Dove. To thank Thai Facebook users for making the sticker set a success, Weller made a special Trash Dove.

Syd Weiler / Facebook

However, after hundreds of commenters pointed out that showing Trash Dove holding the Thai flag with his foot was somewhat offensive, she replaced it with this even cuter Trash Dove.

Syd Weiler / Facebook

He has rain boots!

The other Trash Doves in the set have diverse hobbies such as eating bread, eating bread bowls, eating pizza, and eating donuts. They are cuties. They love carbs! One of them is dead. As for why everyone loves the flailing Trash Dove so much, I feel like it’s fairly obvious — birds are funny, and flailing is a common response to the trips and trials of everyday life on the web. Flailing is my main state of mind, and I highly doubt I’m unique.

Syd Weiler / Facebook