A new viral trend tells you how to stop behaving a certain way. As usual, it’s addressed to women.
A new trend has appeared on TikTok. It’s called “birdemic” and consists of videos in which people primarily women analyse their own behaviour in relationships and label it “bird behaviour”. A bird, in this context, is a woman who accepts too little, who returns to the same man who treats her badly, who puts someone else’s needs before her own dignity.
Up to this point, it sounds like a useful exercise in self-awareness.
The problem appears when you look more carefully at who gets to define what “bird behaviour” is and what it isn’t.
What “birdemic” is and where it comes from.
“Bird” as a term for a woman comes from AAVE African American Vernacular English where it originally described a woman who seeks male validation or tolerates toxic behaviour in relationships. A term with roots in community, used as a form of solidarity and warning between women.
On TikTok, the trend exploded with hundreds of videos soundtracked by SZA or chirping birds. Women laughing at themselves, recounting how they sent messages at 2am or how they cooked dinner for someone who never once took them to a restaurant. Relatable, funny, cathartic content.
But the trend evolved quickly. From “I behaved like a bird and it cost me” to “you are a bird and here’s why”. From self-deprecation to external judgement. From empowerment to a new way of telling women what is not acceptable in their behaviour.
Why the internet loves telling women how to behave.
It’s not the first time. “Pick me girl”, “NPC”, “main character energy”, “low value woman” every year brings a new viral term designed to categorise and rank feminine behaviours. Some are created by women, for women, as forms of solidarity. Others are picked up, distorted and turned into tools of social control.
The mechanism is always the same: you identify a feminine behaviour, give it a name, make it viral, and suddenly anyone can evaluate whether a woman “deserved” what happened to her or whether she is “behaving correctly”. Responsibility shifts from the person who causes harm to the person who reacts to it.
The nuance the trend misses entirely.
The behaviours described as “bird” tolerating toxic relationships, returning to abusive partners, seeking validation are not character flaws. They are often direct results of trauma, upbringing, and a system that has taught women their value depends on someone else’s approval.
Calling this “bird behaviour” and treating it as a bad choice you can “deprogram” with a TikTok playlist misses the context entirely. And worse it turns survivors of toxic dynamics into objects of public ridicule.
But there’s the other side too.
Not all “birdemic” content is problematic. For many women, recognising a toxic pattern in their own behaviour and being able to laugh at it together with others who have been through the same thing is a real form of healing. Solidarity through humour exists and it works.
The problem isn’t the trend itself. It’s the speed with which the internet transforms any tool of feminine self-knowledge into a weapon for judging other women.
The internet wants women invisible. Or, if they’re visible, it wants perfect women. Or, if they’re not perfect, it wants women who publicly self-criticise and make content out of it.
Chirp.
