In 2021, social media users posted various photographs showing a bizarre flyer that encouraged passersby to "Retrain as a swan." The full poster read:
Want a New Challenge?
RETRAIN AS A SWAN
Two day courses / No previous experience necessary
Full Tuition in:
- Honking
- Gliding serenely
- Eating bits of bread
- Breaking a man's armEarn up to £40 working on one of Britain's illustrious waterways
Book online at Cygnusjobs-4-u.net
The surreal poster was shared especially widely on Facebook — the extent of its popularity is illustrated in the screenshot below, which shows just a selection of examples from 2021 alone:
The text of the flyer offered no direct clues as to its origins, and the website listed on it (Cygnusjobs-4-u.net) was quickly claimed by someone who openly admitted "I didn't create the meme."
However, rather than being a mysterious and amusing presence on lampposts throughout the U.K. with an anonymous creator, the flyer actually originated in a fake classified advertisement published by Viz, a renowned British comic book, in February 2020.
The ad design could be found in a Feb. 9, 2020, Facebook post by Viz, which is known for its distinctive brand of surreal and off-color humor:
Back in 2020, tweets showed the swan ad in its original context — next to another parody classified ad for a "motivated person to be moorhen five days a week," under the "Aquatic fowl opportunities" section:
