Background

On February 23rd, 2011, YouTube video blogger Tyler Oakley^[10] posted a photo set via Tumblr depicting a cockatoo bird casually walking into a chocolate fountain. The image post^[9] was featured on the #LOL tag, accruing nearly 111,000 notes over five days. Reposts and parodies of the set were collected under the tags "Chocolate Bird"^[12] and "Chocatoo,"^[13] often pairing the image with an appropriate song.^[14]

The photo series is composed of stillshots from a scene in the 2011 Adam Sandler movie Jack and Jill^[4] where Poopsie, Jill's talking cockatoo, jumps into a chocolate fountain. A behind-the-scenes review of the computer effects needed to film the movie, including the CGI needed to create the bird inside the fountain, was posted to FX Guide^[5] on December 15th, 2011. The scene won an American Human Association PAWSCAR Award^[6] for Best Use of Technology on film in 2012.

Prior to the Tumblr post, Redditor Z3F^[7] compiled several close up shots of the sequence and posted them to Imgur^[8] and Reddit^[2] where it received over 576,000 views within 5 days and reached the frontpage with 15,454 up votes, respectively.

Notable Developments

The following day, Tumblr user Cutiescream^[11], unaware that the animal in the image set was a CGI animation, posted a complaint stating she would unfollow anyone reblogging the photoset^[1], since it depicted animal cruelty. Within five days, this post had over 2000 notes.

In response to this post, fellow Tumblr user Diaxann, defended the pictures. He too was unaware of the images' origin, and pointed out that the bird had not been forced into the fountain and had wandered in by itself. Cutiescream replied with numerous insults and comments, addressing Diaxann with "Listen here cum-slut,"^[3] which soon became reiterated by other Tumblr bloggers who read the response.

This text was then copied by other users over the course of the next several days, combined with misleading images of irrelevant subjects, similar to the MRI Scan copypasta.

Copypasta Text

Listen here cum-slut, I bet you 5 million dollars that you don’t own a bird. But guess what? I own 7. And I can tell you right now that a bird would never just walk into something like a chocolate fountain. They’ll rarely walk directly into water.

But say that your idiotic theory is correct.

Say it did actually walk into it.

That animal still probably died.

Is that still funny to you? Do you still get your kicks out of knowing that that bird was probably terrified and opening its mouth to scream in that last panel?

And if you say yes then you seriously disgust me as a human being.

Birds and Chocolate

Toxic food is one of the top ten killers of pet birds^[15] and chocolate is one of the most harmful^[16] to the animals. Chocolate contains a chemical called theobromine^[17], which can poison animals due to the fact that their bodies cannot process the chemical quickly enough.

Search Interest

Search for "chocolate bird" peaks yearly in March and April, coinciding with the Easter holiday, However search in February 2012 hit an all-time high.

External References