The Trash Dove Meme Explained

Trash Dove is an Internet meme created by Syd Weller. It was released on Facebook on January the 31st in 2017.

The Trash Dove on its own is a broadly drawn cartoon pigeon that thrashes its head back and forth like a headbanger.

The trash doves went viral after being used in a Thai video that gained nearly 4 million views in 5 days.

In the video, you see a pigeon thrashing its head back and forth like it is headbanging at a concert, and you see a cartoon cat having a dance.

The cat and dove combine so that the pigeon’s head makes up the cat’s penis and the cat continues to dance, where the bird’s head looks like a thrashing cat penis. 

Though the Trash Dove has been co-opted by several groups in an attempt to play on its success, it still has no meaning other than an expression of joy.

A sort of “Ha Ha” emoji.

The Trash Dove along with the cat, is also known as a sort-of boastful demonstration of success and joy.

Cat + Pigeon = Cocky Celebration

For example, in one video, an extremist feminist was screaming at a man saying how women live longer because they are happier people.

The man calmly says, “Well, when they are married to women like you, they just want to die.”

The video then shows the cat and the dove GIF with funky music to highlight his success.

As you may expect a victorious person to celebrate with some music and dance, the cat and the pigeon combine to show a character dancing with joy.

On its own, it is a sign of a boastful celebration. 

Pigeon Along = Goofy Celebration

The bird alone is also used as a goofier show of celebration.

When the bird is shown alone, headbanging in its frantic fashion, it too is a celebration, but often of something sillier or dumber.

For example, a video shows a young man trying to skateboard a rising escalator rail, only to fall in mid attempt and land on his board on his bottom.

Thinking quickly, he pretends he intended to do that, celebrates, and the trash dove bird GIF crosses the screen, thrashing its head with the music playing. 


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Negative Adoption and Fake News

As with many fun things, the news media has tried to make horrible stories about harassment, about various groups adopting the Trash Dove for nasty purposes, and fake stories about Syd Weller being depressed because of online harassment.

Yet, none of it was true.

The sad fact is that the Trash Dove meme (the GIF and its various video versions) became very popular, so many people, groups and media publishers tried to hitch their wagon to its success.

Ergo the sheer weight of untrue and dumb stories revolving around the bird.

Much of this fake news even made it into the Trash Dove Wikipedia page.

Yet, all the Trash Dove really was, was a mildly amusing meme that paired itself with a cat to become famous.

Dan

Dan has been fascinated with pigeons since his youth when he used to feed them breadcrumbs at the local park. With a background in SEO Dan noticed a few years ago that there were very few websites around dedicated to his favorite bird so he set out to change that by starting Pigeonpedia.

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