Trash Doves — Purple cartoon pigeon with large yellow eye standing on white background

Trash Doves

2017sticker / reaction imageclassic

Published October 3, 2026

Trash Doves is a Facebook sticker set by Florida artist Syd Weiler featuring a big-eyed purple pigeon, most famously an animated sprite of the bird headbanging. After launching on January 31st, 2017, the headbanging dove went viral in Thailand, swept English-speaking Facebook with spam-comment floods, and then got dragged into a 4chan /pol/ culture war that tried to turn it into the next Pepe.

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Overview

The Trash Doves set includes more than 20 stickers of a chunky purple pigeon crying, giving heart eyes, looking confused and generally mugging for the camera, but the breakout is the looping headbanger that whips its head up and down at an aggressive speed1. Weiler herself described the characters as pigeons dressed up in a joke, telling Hong Kong outlet HK01 that "the Doves are pigeons who like to have fun, and live to make you smile"1 (translated from Chinese).

The sticker's comedy is the volume. Users spammed the headbanger over and over to bomb comment threads, flooding posts with a wall of thrashing birds until the joke was the sheer bombardment itself2. That spammability is what pushed Trash Doves out of the sticker drawer and into image macros, GIF edits and photoshops where the dove got pasted onto music videos, concert footage and real-life recreations3. There was even a Change.org petition asking Mark Zuckerberg to promote the dancing dove to an official Facebook reaction4.

Origin & Background

Platform
Facebook (sticker launch) / Thai Facebook (viral spread)
Creator
Syd Weiler
Date
2017

Florida artist and Adobe Creative Resident Syd Weiler drew most of the purple headbanging pigeons over a single weekend in September 2016, telling HK01 that despite the "Trash Doves" name the characters are actually pigeons1. The sticker set went live on Facebook and Messenger as a free download on January 31st, 20173.

The stickers sat quietly for about a week before Thai Facebook grabbed them. On February 7th, 2017, the page สัตว์โลกอมตีน (Animals With Paws) posted a music video built around the headbanging dove that pulled in over 3.7 million views within five days3.

How It Spread

After the Animals With Paws video, Thai outlets including Beartai and CH7 News ran explainers on the sticker invasion, and Khao Sod English picked up the story in English on February 11th, 2017 under the headline "Thainet Flips Out Over Headbanging Bird"2. Within hours the dove jumped to English-speaking Facebook, where meme pages like TrashDoveMemes and Reddit threads on r/OutOfTheLoop and r/MemeEconomy tried to figure out why their feeds were suddenly full of purple pigeons3.

The story turned ugly on February 12th, 2017, when a 4chan /pol/ campaign called "Pek" tried to redraw the bird as a white-supremacist mascot, photoshopping it with swastikas and framing it as a bird-headed reincarnation of the Egyptian god Thoth in the same style /pol/ had used to claim Pepe the Frog as Kek5. Left-leaning Facebook pages, including a Feminists United post archived on February 14th, started warning that the dove was a neo-Nazi symbol, which only fed the trolling loop3.

On February 15th, 2017, The Daily Dot published "A meme war is raging over the future of Trash Dove," documenting the tug-of-war between /pol/ posters trying to Pepe-ify the bird and users who just wanted to spam a cute pigeon5. Weiler kept promoting the stickers as harmless, and the Pek rebrand never took, leaving the headbanging dove best remembered as a 2017 Facebook sticker fad rather than a hate symbol5.

Timeline

2016-09

Syd Weiler draws most of the purple headbanging pigeon designs over a single weekend[1].

2017-01-31

The Trash Doves sticker set launches on Facebook and Messenger as a free download[3].

2017-02-07

Thai Facebook page สัตว์โลกอมตีน (Animals With Paws) posts a music video using the headbanging dove that hits 3.7 million views in five days[3].

2017-02-11

Khao Sod English publishes "Thainet Flips Out Over Headbanging Bird," marking the jump to English-language coverage[2].

2017-02-12

4chan's /pol/ launches the "Pek" campaign trying to recast the dove as an alt-right symbol[5].

2017-02-14

A Feminists United Facebook post calling the dove a neo-Nazi symbol gets screenshotted and submitted back to /pol/[3].

2017-02-15

The Daily Dot runs "A meme war is raging over the future of Trash Dove"[5].

How to Use This Meme

Typical Trash Dove use is still just picking the headbanging sticker from Facebook Messenger and spamming it in a comment thread or chat, often repeated multiple times for a bombing effect2. In edits, the bird's looping headbang is a common convention to drop onto music footage, concert crowds or dance clips so the pigeon syncs with the beat1.

Frequently Asked Questions