Big Bird is suddenly tiny and everyone online is concerned

Big Bird, back before he became small.
Credit: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

There is an ongoing national nightmare and not enough people are talking about it. Big Bird is now small. Tiny, even. I repeat: Big Bird is small. The horror.

How did this begin? We do not fully know. But Big Bird, seemingly out of nowhere, posted on X (formerly Twitter) that he was small — as if he woke up that way one day. Suddenly, his 8’2″ frame shrunk to insect size. And we’re just supposed to go on living our lives? In this changed world?

This was the initial post, from Wednesday.

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From there, the account for Big Bird has posted repeatedly about being small. And being stuck in his new, tiny size.

Big Bird seemed to grapple with his very identity. Frankly, the posts feel like cosmic horror.

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Has his new size rendered him invisible to his loved ones? Has our beloved giant bird been condemned to a life haunting what once was?

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Your screams will fall on deaf ears, bird. There will be no playing any longer.

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OK, so clearly, this is some sort of marketing stunt. To what end is unclear. But it has worked. The internet has been joking about Big Bird’s shrunkenness.

This article, for instance, has negated some folks’ worries.

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Others joked about how stressed they were.

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I don’t know if this makes me a bad person but this joke made me laugh very hard.

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This one, too.

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And all of these.

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As of this writing this dire situation has not been remedied. Big Bird remains small, as far as we know. The horror continues unabated. But perhaps soon he will return to his full size and all will be right with the world.

Tim Marcin is a culture reporter at Mashable, where he writes about food, fitness, weird stuff on the internet, and, well, just about anything else. You can find him posting endlessly about Buffalo wings on Twitter at @timmarcin.

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