What's With The Purple Bird That's All Over Facebook?
It's everywhere.
By John Lim — 15 Feb 2017, 11:40 AM
Have you noticed a hysterical purple bird that's been flocking your FB news feed? The bird, throwing its head up and down, has gone absolutely viral.
The purple bird's name is Trash Dove and it is the latest meme to take over the Internet after the ridiculously charming #Saltbae.
So, who created the Trash Dove?
The Trash Dove was first drawn by Syd Weiler, a Florida-based illustrator, in September 2016 on one of her regular livestreams where she would sketch and create a series of works live on the Internet.
Upon hearing about Apple's iOS10 Sticker Store, she submitted the purple bird to be immortalised in sticker form.
How did the Trash Dove become so popular?
This is where things get pretty interesting - it was the Thais that propelled the purple bird to social media stardom.
The Trash Dove stickers blew up a day after it was released on Facebook on 31 January.
“My personal FB page had 700 likes on Thursday - it’s now around 35k," Weiler said.
According to Know Your Meme, the first meme featuring Syd’s headbanging purple pigeon originated on a Thai Facebook page, Animals With Paws, in the form of the video above. To date, the video has garnered more than 4 million views!
The trend caught wave and the hashtag #purplebird went blew up on Twitter, and the craze eventually made its way to, basically, everywhere.
The exact reason for such abrupt virality is still unknown, but then again, it's the Internet - and sometimes things go viral for no apparent reason.
Nevertheless, netizens are currently having a field day over the bird, check out some of our favourites:
If you haven't spotted Trash Dove yet, fear not. The purple bird is bobbing its way around the world to a Facebook page near you. :)
