Poop emoji

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The emoji as it appears on Twemoji, which is used on X, Discord, Roblox, the Nintendo Switch, and more

Pile of Poo (💩), also known as the poop emoji (American English), or poo emoji (British English), is an emoji resembling a coiled pile of feces, which is usually adorned with cartoon eyes and a large smile. Originating in Japan, it is used as an expression in various contexts. Some possible uses include: a joke, hateful speech, or its literal meaning. A poop emoji was added to Unicode in Unicode 6.0 in 2010 and to Unicode's official emoji documentation in 2015.

In Japan, a pile of golden poop is a symbol of good luck and was regarded as one of the most useful emojis by Google's Japanese product manager. The icon appeared as a character in the 2017 animated comedy film The Emoji Movie, in which it was voiced by Patrick Stewart. It has appeared in a variety of sources.

History

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Further information: Emoji § History
A black and white poo smiling with effect
The 1997 pile of poo emoji[1]

In Japan, a pile of golden poop, known as Kin no unko, is a symbol of good luck. The name is a pun, meaning both "golden poo" and "good luck" in Japanese.[2] This cultural association influenced the development of the poop emoji, which first gained prominence in Japanese digital communication. The first popular emoji set was created by Shigetaka Kurita, an employee of the Japanese telecom company NTT DoCoMo, and appeared on phones sold by J-Phone in 1997.[2][3] The phones featured a black-and-white poop emoji with a smile and steam lines for comic effect.[1]

In 2007, Google included the poop emoji in the Gmail emoji package after recognizing its significance in Japanese Internet culture. Google, looking to expand its presence in Japan and Asia as a whole, partnered with au by KDDI to develop emoji for Gmail, as part of a project codenamed "Mojo".[4] Gmail's design for the poop emoji lacked a face and included animated flies circling above. 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 poop emoji was the "most useful" emoji.[4] This was corroborated by a statistical analysis undertaken by Google to determine which emojis were the most popular among Japanese users.[4] The design was left to Google Doodle artists Ryan Germick and Susie Sahim, who sought to put a "Google spin" on the existing emoji.[4] They drew inspiration from the existing emoji designs as well as the character Poop-Boy from the Dr. Slump manga of Akira Toriyama.[4][5] They limited themselves to a size of 15×15 pixels, and colors used only in Google's logo.[4] A poop emoji was added to Unicode 6.0 in 2010 and included in Unicode's official emoji documentation in 2015.[6][7] The emoji is in the Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs Unicode block: U+1F4A9 💩 PILE OF POO.[8]

Every emoji is rendered differently by Apple, Android, and other platforms. The poop emoji typically resembles a coiled pile of feces, which is usually adorned with cartoon eyes and a large smile.[9] Around Android's poop emoji, there are insects and wavy lines that imply a foul odour. Apple's poop emoji is grinning and has large eyes. X's poop emoji has also been designed with eyes.[2]

The emoji is commonly used to convey humour, or an alternative to slang terms.[9] Internal documents released by Facebook revealed that the platform's moderation associates the poop emoji with hate speech and bullying.[10] In 2017, a "frowning pile of poo" emoji was met with controversy for inclusion in a future Unicode release after negative feedback against from WG2 experts, including Michael Everson and Andrew West.[11] The symbol was excluded from the most recent version of new character proposals for 2018. However, it has been suggested as an emoji sequence instead.[12]

Uses

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A woman smiling and holding with a poop emoji balloon
Heather Armstrong with poop emoji at her daughter's birthday party

As of 2015, Pile of Poo was the most popular emoji among Canadians.[13] According to data released by Adobe in 2022, the poop emoji was considered the least preferred emoji to use that year.[14] Brenden Gallagher of Complex ranked the smiling poop emoji number one on his "emoji power" list, writing that the smiling poop emoji is "brilliant because it is built on a contradiction. Poop, due to its smell and status as excrement, is considered to be a bad thing. Smiling, an outward indicator of happiness, is largely considered a good thing",[15] while ABC News's Samantha Selinger-Morris states in a 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.[16]

A poop emoji was also used in other situations. In 2023, Elon Musk set X to auto-reply to press emails with a poop emoji. Musk responded with a comment, saying, "💩 = BS", after X referenced the response in its lawsuit to compel him to finish buying the site.[17] The auto-reply message was later replaced with a new message.[18] A restaurant called Poop Café features toilet-shaped chairs and food, and the poop emoji is displayed on the walls and cushions of the establishment.[19] Poop-emoji merchandise includes shirts, dresses, rafts, and toilet plungers.[20][21][22][23]

The poop emoji features in films and application software. It appears as a character named "Poop Daddy", voiced by Patrick Stewart, in the 2017 American animated comedy film The Emoji Movie.[24] A singing karaoke poop emoji, called an animoji, appears on iPhones.[25] A poop emoji appears in an app created by WaterAid, called "Give a sh*t", where users may create their own poop emoji with a variety of colours and accessories.[26]

Encoding

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Character information
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)[27] 246 206 F6 CE
Shift JIS (SoftBank 3G)[27] 249 155 F9 9B
7-bit JIS (au by KDDI)[28] 118 80 76 50
Emoji shortcode[29] :poop:
Google name (pre-Unicode)[30] POOP
CLDR text-to-speech name[31] pile of poo
Google substitute string[30] [ウンチ]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b Willa Paskin (15 April 2020). "Why Did Poop Get Cute?". Slate. Archived from the original on 16 April 2020. Retrieved 31 January 2025.
  2. ^ a b c Sternbergh, Adam (16 November 2014). "Smile, You're Speaking Emoji". New York Magazine. Archived from the original on 26 March 2017. Retrieved 29 March 2017.
  3. ^ Alt, Matt (7 December 2015). "Why Japan Got Over Emojis". Slate. Archived from the original on 14 May 2020. Retrieved 22 January 2019.
  4. ^ a b c d e f Schwartzberg, Lauren (18 November 2014). "The Oral History Of The Poop Emoji (Or, How Google Brought Poop To America)". Fast Company. Archived from the original on 3 April 2018. Retrieved 29 March 2017.
  5. ^ Healy, Claire (12 May 2015). "What does the stinky poop emoji really mean?". Dazed. Archived from the original on 12 April 2018. Retrieved 29 March 2017.
  6. ^ "Unicode 6.0 Emoji List". emojipedia.org. Archived from the original on 7 August 2017. Retrieved 31 December 2018.
  7. ^ "Emoji Data for UTR #51". Archived from the original on 22 March 2017. Retrieved 26 March 2017.
  8. ^ "Unicode Character 'PILE OF POO' (U+1F4A9)". FileFormat.info. Archived from the original on 2 April 2025. Retrieved 29 March 2017.
  9. ^ a b "💩 Pile of Poo Emoji". emojipedia.org. Archived from the original on 2 April 2017. Retrieved 29 March 2017.
  10. ^ Joseph Cox (7 June 2018). "Internal Documents Show How Facebook Decides When a Poop Emoji Is Hate Speech". Vice. Archived from the original on 8 April 2025. Retrieved 2 February 2025.
  11. ^ River Donaghey (3 November 2017). "Emoji Makers Went to War over a New Frowning Poop Emoji". Vice. Archived from the original on 8 April 2025. Retrieved 2 February 2025.
  12. ^ "Sad poop emoji gets flushed after row". BBC. 6 December 2017. Archived from the original on 13 December 2024. Retrieved 2 February 2025.
  13. ^ Lauren O'Neil (22 April 2015). "Canadians top the world in smiling poop emoji use, report finds". CBC News. Archived from the original on 6 October 2024. Retrieved 31 January 2025.
  14. ^ Chandra Steele (15 September 2022). "No 💩:Everybody Hates the Poop Emoji". PCMag. Archived from the original on 9 December 2024. Retrieved 31 January 2025.
  15. ^ Gallagher, Brenden (14 November 2013). "Emoji Power Rankings: The Top 25". Complex. Archived from the original on 29 July 2017. Retrieved 28 July 2017.
  16. ^ Selinger-Morris, Samantha (9 December 2016). "Why are we so passionate about the smiling poop emoji?". ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation). Archived from the original on 30 March 2017. Retrieved 29 March 2017.
  17. ^ Matthew Cantor (23 March 2023). "Twitter's been sending press the poop emoji. Why does Musk love it so much?". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 28 January 2025. Retrieved 31 January 2025.
  18. ^ Jill Goldsmith (21 July 2023). "Twitter Stops Emailing Poop Emojis In Response To Press Queries; Replaces It With New Message". Deadline. Archived from the original on 2 May 2024. Retrieved 1 February 2025.
  19. ^ "Poop Cafe debuts this weekend, hopes it isn't a stinker with locals". CBC. Archived from the original on 19 November 2022. Retrieved 29 April 2025.
  20. ^ Morwenna Ferrier (13 January 2015). "The Poo shirt (or the rise of emoji fashion)". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 26 December 2024. Retrieved 1 February 2025.
  21. ^ Amanda Kooser (9 March 2015). "Poo Emoji Dress is surprisingly classy, but also covered in poo emoji". CNET. Archived from the original on 18 August 2024. Retrieved 1 February 2025.
  22. ^ Chris Plante (28 June 2016). "Poop emoji rafts belong in every pool". The Verge. Archived from the original on 7 December 2024. Retrieved 1 February 2025.
  23. ^ Catherine Shoard (22 February 2019). "Oscars gift bags to include cannabis skin cream and grinning toilet brush". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 21 September 2022. Retrieved 1 February 2025.
  24. ^ Giardina, Carolyn (18 January 2017). "Patrick Stewart to Voice Poop Emoji in 'Emoji Movie'". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on 28 January 2017. Retrieved 25 January 2017.
  25. ^ "New Apple iPhone X ad features a singing karaoke poop emoji called an 'animoji'". South China Morning Post. 29 November 2017. Archived from the original on 6 December 2022. Retrieved 1 February 2025.
  26. ^ Eleanor Goldberg (19 November 2015). "Poop Emojis Highlight Fact People Worldwide Lack Access To Sanitation". HuffPost. Archived from the original on 25 September 2023. Retrieved 1 February 2025.
  27. ^ a b Unicode Consortium. "Emoji Sources". Unicode Character Database. Archived from the original on 28 April 2020. Retrieved 24 April 2020.
  28. ^ 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. Archived (PDF) from the original on 15 June 2019. Retrieved 24 April 2020.
  29. ^ JoyPixels. "Emoji Alpha Codes". Emoji Toolkit. Archived from the original on 23 January 2021. Retrieved 24 April 2020.
  30. ^ a b Android Open Source Project (2009). "GMoji Raw". Skia Emoji. Archived from the original on 3 October 2020. Retrieved 21 September 2020.
  31. ^ Unicode, Inc. "Annotations". Common Locale Data Repository. Archived from the original on 23 January 2021. Retrieved 21 September 2020.
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