Meme of the Week

Posted By Ari Snaevarsson on Feb 20, 2017 | 0 comments

By Ari Snaevarsson, Features Editor

Trash dove is the name of a group of Facebook stickers added in January 2017.  Starting out just as a cute new set of stickers, comprised of trash dove doing various things (the most notable of which is the head-trashing one), it was a YouTube video put out in Thailand that this odd, purple bird has to thank for its popularity.  The video depicted trash dove in a dance competition with a cat.

The meme seems to have exploded out of nowhere, with so many people using it to spam the comments of others’ posts that a petition has been created to ban it.  As of now, it has 6,979 supporters, out of the goal 7,500.

Why exactly this meme has caught on so fast and erupted on everyone’s Facebook feed is uncertain.  There are allegations that it has taken on a new meaning, being used by fringe hate groups to spam posts they disagree with, but this has little founding.  So I regret to say I am at a bit of a loss here.

As with most new-age memes, trash dove relies on irony.  There is no punchline implied through its usage; the mere fact that it is random and generally unrelated to the context in which it is posted is enough to render it comedy gold among the youths.

And so, I give trash dove a 2.5/5.  I regret to say that it is not worth the fame it has received.  While it is funny how damn fast this pigeon whips its head in the iconic head-thrashing gif, it is in all honesty a pretty lame meme.  I expect it to start dying out in popularity within the next couple of weeks, and in a month’s time, it should be completely dead.  There is my $0.02.