Thursday 23 February 2017

What Does This Purple Bird Mean?

If you are an avid social media user then you must have seen a purple bird popping up the timeline out of nowhere in last couple of days. A trend has been in the Asian region of Facebook users wherein they are finding a purple bird in their News Feed every now and then which has left a number of users puzzled about its existence. This is a sticker for Facebook named Trash Dove which happens to be a cartoon baby of the American artist named Syd Weiler.

Inspiration behind the Purple Bird

Syd Weiller is based in Florida where he created the Purple Bird design in the September of 2016 and later on went to create a set of Facebook sticker in the month of January 2017. Trash Dove as called by the creator as made available to the public in later weeks to be used as emojis. The most popular version of its emoji is the one wherein bird happens to vigorously thrash its head up and down.

It has been available for quite some time for the Facebook users to utilize as emojis in their online conversations but it came into prominence in the Asian region with the help of a popular Thai Facebook Page. This particular Page started a dance off with a cartoon cat in the earlier weeks of February. And just within a week of this gimmick this helped in racking over 4 million of views and generated a loyal base of fan base.

Getting popular with each passing day

The popular of the Trash Dove was covered by some of the news channels in Thailand which further boosted the overall reach and might of this emoji. This move even compelled Weiler to post a Facebook ‘Thank You’ video on her Facebook page wherein she thanked Thailand for their incredible support love for her creation. It would be absurd to consider that everyone is a fan of the Trash Dove as petition has already been filed for its ban as a number of people have complained on being fed up with the purple bobbing head popping in their News Feed.

The reason attributed to its popularity in the Asian region is its unique blend of style, graphic and not so alarming bird tricks. Some find it extremely pleasing and exciting while some complains of it being annoying and distasteful. In order to reveal the inspiration or reason behind creating the Trash Dove, Weiler stated that she simply created it as dumb iOS stickers which can be used to spam friend and family in a non-offensive manner.

Trash Dove is the first case of breakout popular sensations on the internet as in the past year we have seen a number of memes likes Salt Bae and cash me outside gain huge traction within a short time. But these breakout sensations have been short lived as well as people got tired of it quickly.

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