Three years ago, Thailand had a hot word or popular joke to compare situations where you like somebody so much but keep getting refused or ignored – that’s when we nok (a verb meaning bird) from someone or we “NOK again.” This year Thai social media has a new “nok” to talk about: Trash Doves.
What is that floppy purple bird on Facebook feed?
Where did Trash Doves come from?
Trash Doves is the sticker series that was licensed for Facebook on January 31, 2016, created by Syd Weiler from Florida, USA. The purple bird is actually inspired by a standard pigeon that pecking the ground for garbage to eat.
Her first announcement about this was on Twitter mentioning that this sticker is for “spamming your friends and enemies.” Thai people began spamming comment section with huge amount of these stickers without any explanation, leaving the victims wondering what is this purple bird and what does it mean? It’s kind of fun to make friends confused and also annoyed by lots of stickers that you also see it everywhere on Facebook, be it in comments, private messages and wall posts. What is going on here?
That Wednesday’s night was the beginning of the Nok War on Thai Facebook and spread out to other countries a lot until a few days after that Syd Weiler posted a video to say a big thanks to Thai people that love her stickers.
Why Did Trash Doves Becomes So Popular?
Why these stickers became very popular especially in Thailand is no longer a mystery. The reason behind it is that many people in Thailand now like fun and extreme stuffs. The bird is rocking, and it expresses the most feelings. That makes them satisfied (sa-jai). Especially teenagers and young adults that have more freedom to show their real feelings. This sticker is one sample of the tools that answer what they need.
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A dirty idea comes out comparing the bird’s head and neck with the person’s penis. The real funny stuff begins from big influencer “Sad Lok Om Teen (สัตว์โลกอมตีน),” a comedy Facebook page with over 2.5 million active likes that created video of “MiM & Yam cat” and “trash doves” having body combination or “Trash Doves and MiM & Yam cat combination.gif” to share with their followers. Well, when you see it, you know how much it rocks! This video and gif are one huge aspect of this sticker phenomenon in Thailand. It becomes viral and people try to merge this bird with another memes, cosplaying as it, and create another crazy stuffs for fun.
Most important point why it is so popular is what Syd Weiler mentioned on the first day this sticker launched. This sticker is for joking others and make them annoyed. It is easy just to make comment to others, and do not have to say anything yet. Funny stickers that are cute and playful. That is why Thai people love Trash Doves because of its simplicity and different idea: the concept that comes with activities for people to enjoy together until they become the trend.
Trash Doves in The West World
In the western countries, this purple bird became viral since there is a contest by Trash Dove Memes Facebook page to start using this set of stickers to spam somebody else to the point that you can get blocked by Facebook not to send this sticker set anymore. “Misusing the feature” will cause an error message that you can use to claim free stickers from this page.
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Trash Doves is Getting Banned
It is kind of fun and the internet becomes live playground for a month. Google Trends show a 100 percent increase in the search term on Google. However, on the opposite side of the story, there are some drawbacks of Trash Doves. Some people (really) do not enjoy these flooded stickers. Therefore, we should use this sticker set carefully and listen what your friends say before it becomes real issue or you get banned or blocked by friends and admins. This trend will be only trend that become the past very quickly or it will last longer is up to our use of it.
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