Campanha CALA BOCA GALVÃO

A colleague on our Graphics desk, Sergio Peçanha, points out that the vuvuzela is not the only thing generating a maddening din during World Cup matches in South Africa. Apparently, Brazilian soccer fans have been reaching for the mute button to block out the commentary of Galvão Bueno, the country’s best-known sports announcer.

So annoying do they find his pronouncements on the tournament that the phrase “Cala Boca Galvão,” (or, “Shut Up Galvão” in Portuguese) became Twitter’s top trending topic on Monday.

As Raphael Tsavkko Garcia explains in a post in the Global Voices blog, the sudden appearance of this phrase at the very top of Twitter’s list of trending topics led to speculation among nonspeakers of Portuguese about what it could possibly mean. That in turn led some Brazilians to offer elaborate and entirely fictional explanations, the most popular of which was that the phrase actually means “Save the Galvão,” a supposedly endangered species of bird that can only be saved by a Twitter campaign.

On Sunday, a hoax video appeared on YouTube imploring the world to help save the Galvão birds from extinction — by “retweeting” the phrase “Cala Boca Galvão” on Twitter. So far, it seems to be working — the video has been watched more than 200,000 times and not one Galvão has expired today.