Trash Doves is a set of Facebook stickers by Florida artist and Adobe creative resident Syd Weller. The doves are literally large-eyed purple pigeons shown to represent various situations. The most popular in the set is the animated sprite dove that thrashes its head up and down vigorously.
Initially, Weiler got the stickers idea in Minneapolis.
"I was sitting by a pond … and there were just pigeons everywhere. I had never thought about pigeons before. They're funny little birds. They have really shiny, colorful, almost rainbow-y feathers, but then they bob around and waddle and beg for food. They're like doves but they eat trash."
Weiler then created the dove stickers while streaming live on Twitch, after submitting the drawings to Apple for consideration in the iOS 10 sticker store back in September 2016.
After Apple debuted the stickers for messaging in iOS, they were then syndicated by Facebook. This is the start of its popularity.
"...But I didn’t expect anything like this,” Weiler said. "I woke up on Thursday … I think, and everyone had tagged me in the joke videos. It was surreal."
The doves quickly became viral after being photoshopped to various parodies and image macros on the internet and social media.
It's initial momentum started in Thailand. The dove stickers were included in a music video posted on the Animals With Paws Facebook page (สัตว์โลกอมตีน). In five days, it quickly garnered more than 3.7 million views.
"It all started in Thailand, actually - they have a joke about birds there, and it tied in there," said Weiler.
The next few weeks, the dove stickers continued its momentum, to even get picked by some Thailand-based news agencies.
On February 2017, mishaps happenned. The dove sensations reached to English-speaking Facebook, prompting a flood of spam comments featuring the purple-colored birds.
People started to become irritated by the endless spam in comments featuring the bird, Some people have even proposed Facebook to ban the bird from ever showing itself again.
Besides Facebook, the Trash Dove sticker sets have also been popular on YouTube, Reddit and others.
