Orange and fluffy, with two bulbous eyes forever locked into a morose stare, the orange alien plush named Pou has become an object of grim fascination on thousands of TikToks. Videos show Pou (or #pou, on the social media site) in all manner of dire situations: falling off snowbanks, drinking hard liquor, taking depression showers, even commiting suicide.
The hashtag has amassed over 5 billion views, and made the alien Pou something of a funereal icon among viewers. Pou, who first made its debut in a 2012 mobile game app, is both existentially downtrodden yet adorable, and an outlet for our feelings of loneliness, anxiety and depression. Many of the comments on Pou videos point out both the relatable quality of the situations and the sheer absurdity of their premises. “Me everyday,” one TikTok commenter wrote. “make hin drink Jack Daniel’s next,” said another viewer.
TikTok creator @gloomypou, who makes Pou videos with help from their girlfriend and is one of the more active participants in the Pou community, says he started making Pou content because he found it cute. “We started creating these videos out of pure joy for the adorable Pou plush toy, using it as a fun way to learn video-making skills during our free time,” the creator, who asked to speak anonymously due to the nature of his account, tells Fast Company. “We find inspiration in videos that are unique, carry a strong message, are fun, or are professionally done and authentic.”
Yet this is not Pou’s first time going viral online. The character has in fact long been a niche internet icon. Pou was first introduced in 2012 as the titular character in a mobile game, similar to Tamagotchi and Webkinz, created by Lebanese game designer Paul Salameh. At the start of the game, Pou appears as a triangular blob, with a simple curve of a smile and little ability to move around; players could dress the creature up, or bathe it, or feed it. The game quickly became a hit online, and now has over 500 million downloads on the Google Play Store. It even inspired several other similar games centered around caring for amorphous blobs, including Mou, Moy, and My Boo.
Salameh said he was not involved in the resurgence of Pou. “It began passively — indirectly because of a K-pop star, Na Kamden,” he said, referring to the K-pop idol whose expressions were often compared to the alien; after Na was pictured holding one of the plushies, the legend of Pou only grew.
While the aim of the Pou game was to raise a healthy, happy creature, people quickly began to try and see if they could do the opposite and kill Pou. Users shared possible theories of how they might bring about its demise. “You can’t kill pou he’s stronger than thanos but if u reset ur data or delete the game the only to do it,” one person commented on YouTube. “You can kill pou temporarily. Go outside then go to pool, swipe to right (you need to do it perfectly, make sure it goes as right as possible) so the floater goes out of the screen,” a Reddit user recommended.
There is a long history of users trying to push the socially-acceptable boundaries through video games, whether it’s barbecuing babies on Sims or creating a villager ethnostate on Animal Crossing. In reaction to the fan trend of trying to kill Pou, a counternarrative resurfaced: if you tried to mess with Pou, Pou could, in fact, kill you. Evil Pou became a niche meme amongst fans, spawning plenty of fan theories of how to beat the alien before it got to you.
Yahoo News internet culture reporter Kelsey Weekman says that these sort of fandom in-jokes add to a sense of community online. “Memes are kind of the folklore of our time,” she says. “Of course we take these weird little characters and assign meaning and history to them. That’s the heart of storytelling and it’s human nature.”
“Pou, for us, symbolizes the strength found in vulnerability, a message we’re passionate about spreading,” @gloomypou tells Fast Company. “The positive feedback has encouraged us to consider expanding our product range in the future.”
So Pou has gone from a wholesome alien to be taken care of, to something that could be killed, to something that could kill you, and now is something killing itself. But Weekman thinks lore-building is something that has long been part of internet culture’s fabric, and something as extreme as Pou is primed for virality on TikTok.
“This era of the internet — controlled by algorithms and microtrends — rewards the people willing to do the work to dig deeper on what they find,” Weekman says. “Part of why so many memes have a deep ‘lore’ is because that rejects the ‘only consuming the content you’re served’ mindset that a casual social media user might have. By knowing the lore behind something like Pou, you’ve signaled that you’re more in-the-know than the average consumer.”
These Pou accounts also predominantly carry the earmarkings of dropshipping businesses, with every major Pou account linking to some form of low-priced merchandise store. @gloomypou sells Pou plushes through a separate website, which opens up directly onto the product page, where you can buy bundles of plushes at different price options. They said they’d like to expand their product range soon. “The response from our fans has been heartwarming, leading us to start [selling] these delightful Pous,” they said.
By definition, the dropshipping business model is “an order fulfillment option that allows ecommerce businesses to outsource the processes of procuring, storing, and shipping products to a third party,” according to Amazon. The model allows sellers to fulfill orders without any stock on hand, keeping overhead costs low; what’s more, the removal of inventory logistics or required supply chain knowledge means anyone can become a dropshipper. Online, it’s often advertised as a get-rich-quick hack and has become synonymous with the e-commerce age, where fast fashion and microtrends have encouraged the turnaround of cheap commodity for low cost, aided by the growth of major retail marketplaces like Temu, Amazon, TikTok Shop and Alibaba. Weekman says it also helps that the lack of initial cost means that dropshippers have been able to take advantage of the fast trend cycle, jumping on a product when it becomes popular and pivoting as soon as the trend dies. “It’s like fast fashion for distribution,” she says.
As a result, many dropshippers have been accused of scamming users by hemorrhaging Shein-level merchandise while positioning themselves as quaint small businesses, and delivering shoddy, delayed products—or worse, no product at all.
A predominant characteristic of dropshipping is marketing in very specific ways in order to drive consumers to purchase. “The best dropshippers will run ‘funnels’: repeatedly targeting the same consumers over a period of time in order to coax them through the various stages of purchase – add to cart, enter card details, check out,” Wired wrote in 2020. As a result, many dropshipping businesses take on specific niches in order to reach their target audiences, and rely heavily on social media to spread the word.
It might not even be something inherently malicious, Weekman adds, but important to remain wary of. “Pou is most definitely a product,” she says. “The brilliant marketing behind his success is still marketing. But I don’t always think that’s a bad thing. We can still love the people making creative Pou ads for what they produce. For the creator economy to exist, someone has to be generating money somehow. Whether it’s ad revenue from a social media platform or pennies-per-order from a dropshipping operation, something has to keep the lights on at home.”
At least within the world of Pou, there is still a character that many adore and love. Salameh for his part, doesn’t see a depressed Pou when he watches the TikTok videos. “This is hungry Pou,” he says. “Not depressed. But people express things in their own ways.”
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