Pile of Poo (💩), also known informally as the poomoji (slang), poop emoji (American English), or poo emoji (British English), is an emoji resembling a coiled pile of feces, usually adorned with cartoon eyes and a large smile.[1] Originated from Japan, it is used as an expression of various contexts. Some possible uses include: as a response of passive aggressive emotion, for comedic value, as commentary on what's bad, or as its literal meaning.[2][3][4][5][6]
The emoji is in the Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs Unicode block: U+1F4A9 💩 PILE OF POO.[7]
History
A smiling and steaming pile of poo emoji first appeared in the set of 90 emoji for the J-Phone released in 1997. Public exposure to this set was limited by high device costs.[9] J-Phone subsequently became Vodafone Japan, and is now known as SoftBank Mobile.[10]
In 1998/99, Japanese mobile operators NTT DoCoMo, au by KDDI, and SoftBank Mobile each defined their own variants of emoji using proprietary specifications. The first popular emoji set was created by NTT DoCoMo employee Shigetaka Kurita[11] for the company's i-Mode service.[9] Compared to SoftBank, au by KDDI included a pile of poo with a different design, without a smiley face.[12]
In 2007, Google, looking to expand its presence in Japan and Asia as a whole, partnered with au to develop emoji for Gmail, a project codenamed "Mojo". Gmail's design for the pile of poo emoji lacked a face and was circled above by animated flies. When deciding which emoji to include, Takeshi Kishimoto, Google's Japanese product manager, went directly to the manager of Gmail and convinced him that the pile of poo emoji was the "most useful" emoji. This was corroborated by a statistical analysis undertaken by Google to determine which emojis were the most popular among Japanese users. According to Google software engineer Darren Lewis, the pile of poo emoji was "way up there" in terms of popularity. Design for the emoji was left to Google Doodle artists Ryan Germick and Susie Sahim, who sought to put a "Google spin" on the existing emojis. They drew inspiration from the existing emoji designs as well as the character Poop-Boy from the Dr. Slump manga by Akira Toriyama. They limited themselves to a size of 15×15 pixels and colors used only in Google's logo.[13][14]
Google first supported emoji in Gmail in October 2008,[13] and Apple added Pile of Poo to iPhone OS within the first emoji release of Apple Color Emoji[15] on 21 November 2008.[16] Initially, Apple's emoji support was implemented for holders of a SoftBank SIM card; the emoji themselves were represented using SoftBank's Private Use Area scheme and mostly resembled the SoftBank designs.[17]
Pile of Poo was added to Unicode in Unicode 6.0[18] in 2010, and to Unicode's official emoji documentation in 2015.[19]
In January 2017 there was a public outcry when recently crowned Miss Belgium, Romanie Schotte, used a "pile of poo" in response to a racist comment about somebody in the background of one of her Instagram photos, many taking it to condone the comment.[20][21] The Belgian Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism opened an investigation but found no wrongdoing on her part,[22][23] while the man pictured unsuccessfully sued her over the incident.[24][25]
In 2017, a "frowning pile of poo" emoji was shortlisted for inclusion in a future Unicode release.[26] After negative feedback on this character from WG2 experts including Michael Everson and Andrew West,[12] the frowning pile of poo emoji was removed from the list of emoji candidates.[27]
Encoding
The Pile of Poo emoji is encoded as follows:
| Preview | 💩 | |
|---|---|---|
| Unicode name | PILE OF POO | |
| Encodings | decimal | hex |
| Unicode | 128169 | U+1F4A9 |
| UTF-8 | 240 159 146 169 | F0 9F 92 A9 |
| UTF-16 | 55357 56489 | D83D DCA9 |
| GB 18030 | 148 57 218 51 | 94 39 DA 33 |
| Numeric character reference | 💩 |
💩 |
| Shift JIS (au by KDDI)[28] | 246 206 | F6 CE |
| Shift JIS (SoftBank 3G)[28] | 249 155 | F9 9B |
| 7-bit JIS (au by KDDI)[29] | 118 80 | 76 50 |
| Emoji shortcode[30] | :poop: | |
| Google name (pre-Unicode)[31] | POOP | |
| CLDR text-to-speech name[32] | pile of poo | |
| Google substitute string[31] | [ウンチ] | |
Popularity
ABC News's Samantha Selinger-Morris states in her 2016 article that the smiling poop emoji is "one of the most popular emojis in existence" due to its "ineffable charm" and "ability to transcend language barriers and political differences". As such, it has been featured on Mylar birthday balloons and cupcakes.[33]
The icon is a character in 2017's The Emoji Movie, voiced by Patrick Stewart.[34][35]
See also
References
- ^ "💩 Pile of Poo Emoji". emojipedia.org. Retrieved 29 March 2017.
- ^ "💩 Pile of Poo emoji Meaning".
- ^ McDermott, Kirstie (8 March 2015). "8 Emojis You Might Not Know The Real Meaning Of". Stellar. Retrieved 29 March 2017.
- ^ "Poop Emoji 💩". Know Your Meme. 5 December 2016.
- ^ "💩 Pile of Poo emoji Meaning". Dictionary.com. 28 February 2018.
- ^ Rusciano, Aly (7 March 2022). "What Does the 💩 Poop Emoji Mean?". WikiHow. Retrieved 3 April 2022.
- ^ "Unicode Character 'PILE OF POO' (U+1F4A9)". FileFormat.info. Retrieved 29 March 2017.
- ^ "Correcting the Record on the First Emoji Set". Emojipedia. 8 March 2019. Retrieved 12 February 2023.
- ^ a b Alt, Matt (7 December 2015). "Why Japan Got Over Emojis". Slate. Retrieved 22 January 2019.
- ^ Kaufman, Joanne (24 May 2018). "If You Think the Poop Emoji is Gross, Don't Read This". The New York Times.
- ^ Sternbergh, Adam (16 November 2014). "Smile, You're Speaking Emoji". NY Mag. Retrieved 29 March 2017.
- ^ a b Anderson, Debbie (22 October 2017). "Feedback from WG2 email discussion list on PDAM 2.2" (PDF). UTC L2/17-393.
- ^ a b Schwartzberg, Lauren (18 November 2014). "The Oral History Of The Poop Emoji (Or, How Google Brought Poop To America)". Fast Company. Retrieved 29 March 2017.
- ^ Healy, Claire (12 May 2015). "What does the stinky poop emoji really mean?". Dazed. Retrieved 29 March 2017.
- ^ Burge, Jeremy (21 November 2018). "Apple Emoji Turns 10". Emojipedia. Retrieved 31 December 2018.
- ^ "💩 Pile of Poo on Apple iPhone OS 2.2". emojipedia.org. Retrieved 31 December 2018.
- ^ Emojipedia. "Apple iPhone OS 2.2". Emojipedia.
- ^ "Unicode 6.0 Emoji List". emojipedia.org. Retrieved 31 December 2018.
- ^ "Emoji Data for UTR #51". Retrieved 26 March 2017.
- ^ "Raciste, la nouvelle miss Belgique? Romanie Schotte se défend". La Libre Belgique (in French). 17 January 2017.
- ^ "Racisme: Miss Belgique 2017 au coeur d'une polémique". Jeune Afrique (in French). 17 January 2017.
- ^ "Unia opent racismedossier na Instagram-commentaar Miss België". VRT Nieuws (in Dutch). 17 January 2017.
- ^ "Unia: Géén verdere stappen tegen Miss België, was wel "onhandige reactie"". VRT Nieuws (in Dutch). 1 February 2017.
- ^ "Miss voor rechter om racistische poepsmiley". De Telegraaf (in Dutch). 18 May 2017.
- ^ "Ex-miss Romanie Schotte (20) moet geen schadevergoeding betalen". Het Laatste Nieuws (in Dutch). 12 September 2018.
- ^ "Kangaroo, Softball, Frowning Poo Emojis Possible For 2018". Emojipedia. 3 August 2017. Retrieved 18 August 2017.
- ^ Unicode Emoji Subcommittee (26 October 2017). "Ad hoc recommendations for Emoji 6.0" (PDF).
- ^ a b Unicode Consortium. "Emoji Sources". Unicode Character Database.
- ^ Scherer, Markus; Davis, Mark; Momoi, Kat; Tong, Darick; Kida, Yasuo; Edberg, Peter. "Emoji Symbols: Background Data—Background data for Proposal for Encoding Emoji Symbols" (PDF). UTC L2/10-132.
- ^ JoyPixels. "Emoji Alpha Codes". Emoji Toolkit.
- ^ a b Android Open Source Project (2009). "GMoji Raw". Skia Emoji.
- ^ Unicode, Inc. "Annotations". Common Locale Data Repository.
- ^ Selinger-Morris, Samantha (9 December 2016). "Why are we so passionate about the smiling poop emoji?". ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation). Retrieved 29 March 2017.
- ^ Amidi, Amid (10 October 2016). "'Emojimovie: Express Yourself' Promises To Make You A Better Person". Cartoon Brew. Retrieved 20 November 2016.
- ^ Giardina, Carolyn (18 January 2017). "Patrick Stewart to Voice Poop Emoji in 'Emoji Movie'". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 25 January 2017.
External links
