The Pigeon was one of the most perplexing sites on the useless web. I did a lot of digging and could never come up with any information about who made it, or why. I was under the impression to have a .org domain you needed to be an organization.
Who is the pigeon, and what do they want?
In April 2024 the domain (thepigeon.org) expired and got taken over by a parking page, so we don’t link out to it anymore. But we did go back through the Internet Archive and dig out every snapshot we could find — there were really three pigeons across the domain’s life.
The first pigeon wasn’t a useless-web site at all. Between 2010 and 2013, the domain belonged to a pigeon-breeders’ fan site, with breed catalogs (Jacobins, Arabian Trumpeters, Doves) and embedded YouTube videos. Whoever made our pigeon must have picked up the domain after the breeders let it lapse.
The second pigeon (mk1) ran from 2017 to 2021. 237 bytes of HTML, one centered pigeon.jpeg. Pure.
The third pigeon (mk2) showed up in 2022 — same energy, but a much higher-resolution image, blown up full-bleed across the whole viewport. Possibly a different pigeon entirely. Ran until the domain expired.
If ANYONE has any information on the site, I still have a lot of questions. Please send me a hot tip.