flailing purple bird
In February 2017, a GIF of a flailing purple dove from a Facebook sticker set called “Trash Doves” was seemingly everywhere, popping up in never-ending chains of comment threads. But after achieving viral fame, the sticker set led to a litany of issues as it journeyed across the web: its creator, Syd Weiler, was doxxed; she dealt with repeated instances of plagiarism and copyright infringement; and at one point, 4chan users coordinated a harassment campaign to pretend the dove was a hate symbol, leading to its removal from Apple’s App Store. These events, documented by Weiler in a blog post last week, are a harrowing reminder of the pitfalls of extreme virality, especially for independent artists. “The improbable explosion of my work online changed my life and the course of my illustration career entirely,” Weiler writes. The challenges of going viral started in smaller ways. The doves first went viral in Thailand after appearing in a Thai Facebook page for memes and began quickly spreading across Asia, which meant that Weiler couldn’t read most of the articles, interviews, and memes being made about her stickers. The Messenger sticker set was also credited to Weiler’s name, opening up her personal Facebook page to thousands of strangers who could now see her photos and comment on her posts. Weiler locked down her personal account privacy settings, and began redirecting people to an official fan page. (If you haven’t taken a look at your Facebook privacy settings, here’s a guide.)
To thank Thai users for the success of the stickers, Weiler drew a little Trash Dove holding the Thai flag with its foot — which turned out to be an offensive cultural faux pas, as feet are considered to be dirty in Thai culture. The image resulted in people sending her angry messages cursing her and asking her why she hated Thailand. She apologized, and redrew the image with the flag in its beak, which commenters accepted (“It’s OK, we know you didn’t mean to do it”). As the bird’s popularity began spreading to the rest of the world, it made its way to 4chan, where users started a misinformation campaign to turn the bird into a symbol of white supremacy and neo-Nazi subliminal messaging. Weiler’s two iMessage sticker packs (Trash Doves and the Trash Doves Holiday pack), her primary source of income, were briefly taken down from the App Store after trolls flagged the stickers for hate symbolism. 4chan users targeted Weiler as well, flooding her inboxes with images of the dove photoshopped in with Nazi imagery. During one of her Twitch streams, a user posted her address in the chat, prompting her to call the cops in the event she was being swatted. Police informed her there was nothing they could do, unless there were direct threats being made.
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