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Pile of Poo (💩), also known informally as the poomoji (
slang Slang is vocabulary (words, phrases, and linguistic usages) of an informal register, common in spoken conversation but avoided in formal writing. It also sometimes refers to the language generally exclusive to the members of particular in-g ...
), poop emoji (
American English American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the most widely spoken language in the United States and in most circumstances ...
), or poo emoji (
British English British English (BrE, en-GB, or BE) is, according to Oxford Dictionaries, "English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere". More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in England, or, more broadly ...
), is an
emoji An emoji ( ; plural emoji or emojis) is a pictogram, logogram, ideogram or smiley embedded in text and used in electronic messages and web pages. The primary function of emoji is to fill in emotional cues otherwise missing from typed conversa ...
resembling a coiled pile of
feces Feces ( or faeces), known colloquially and in slang as poo and poop, are the solid or semi-solid remains of food that was not digested in the small intestine, and has been broken down by bacteria in the large intestine. Feces contain a relati ...
, usually adorned with cartoon eyes and a large smile. 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. The emoji is in the
Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs is a Unicode block containing meteorological and astronomical symbols, emoji characters largely for compatibility with Japanese telephone carriers' implementations of Shift JIS, and characters originally fro ...
Unicode block: .


History

A smiling and steaming pile of poo emoji first appeared in the set of 90 emoji for the
J-Phone is a Japanese multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo which focuses on investment management. The Group primarily invests in companies operating in technology, energy, and financial sectors. It also runs the ...
released in 1997. Public exposure to this set was limited by high device costs. J-Phone subsequently became Vodafone Japan, and is now known as
SoftBank Mobile is a Japanese multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo which focuses on investment management. The Group primarily invests in companies operating in technology, energy, and financial sectors. It also runs the ...
. In 1998/99, Japanese mobile operators NTT DoCoMo, au by KDDI, and
SoftBank Mobile is a Japanese multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo which focuses on investment management. The Group primarily invests in companies operating in technology, energy, and financial sectors. It also runs the ...
each defined their own variants of emoji using proprietary specifications. The first popular emoji set was created by NTT DoCoMo employee
Shigetaka Kurita use both this parameter and , birth_date to display the person's date of birth, date of death, and age at death) --> , death_place = , death_cause = , body_discovered = , resting_place = , resting_place_coordinates = ...
for the company's
i-Mode NTT DoCoMo's i-mode is a mobile internet (distinct from wireless internet) service popular in Japan. Unlike Wireless Application Protocols, i-mode encompasses a wider variety of internet standards, including web access, e-mail, and the packet- ...
service. Compared to SoftBank, au by KDDI included a pile of poo with a different design, without a smiley face. In 2007,
Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. I ...
, looking to expand its presence in Japan and Asia as a whole, partnered with develop emoji for
Gmail Gmail is a free email service provided by Google. As of 2019, it had 1.5 billion active users worldwide. A user typically accesses Gmail in a web browser or the official mobile app. Google also supports the use of email clients via the POP an ...
, 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 A Google Doodle is a special, temporary alteration of the Google logo, logo on Google's home page, homepages intended to commemorate holidays, events, achievements, and notable historical figures. The first Google Doodle honored the 1998 edition ...
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 is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Akira Toriyama. It was serialized in Shueisha's anthology magazine ''Weekly Shōnen Jump'' from 1980 to 1984, with the chapters collected into 18 ''tankōbon'' volumes. The series fol ...
'' manga by
Akira Toriyama is a Japanese manga artist and character designer. He first achieved mainstream recognition for his highly successful manga series ''Dr. Slump'', before going on to create ''Dragon Ball'' (his best-known work) and acting as a character design ...
. They limited themselves to a size of 15×15 pixels and colors used only in Google's logo. Google first supported emoji in Gmail in October 2008, and Apple added Pile of Poo to
iPhone OS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also include ...
within the first emoji release of Apple Color Emoji on 21 November 2008. 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 In Unicode, a Private Use Area (PUA) is a range of code points that, by definition, will not be assigned characters by the Unicode Consortium. Three private use areas are defined: one in the Basic Multilingual Plane (), and one each in, and near ...
scheme and mostly resembled the SoftBank designs. Pile of Poo was added to
Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, whic ...
in Unicode 6.0 in 2010, and to Unicode's official emoji documentation in 2015. In January 2017 there was a public outcry when recently crowned
Miss Belgium Miss Belgium is a national beauty pageant in Belgium. The winner of Miss Belgium automatically represents her country at the Miss World and Miss Universe pageants if the dates do not overlap. Rules *Belgian nationality *to be never married and ...
, Romanie Schotte, used a "pile of poo" in response to a racist comment about somebody in the background of one of her
Instagram Instagram is a photo and video sharing social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. The app allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters and organized by hashtags and geographical tagging. Posts can be ...
photos, many taking it to condone the comment. The Belgian
Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism Unia or the Interfederal Center for Equal Opportunities (Dutch: , French: Unia (institution) ''Centre pour l'égalité des chances et la lutte contre le racisme'' ) is an independent public institution that fights discrimination and promotes equ ...
opened an investigation but found no wrongdoing on her part, while the man pictured unsuccessfully sued her over the incident. In 2017, a "frowning pile of poo" emoji was shortlisted for inclusion in a future Unicode release. After negative feedback on this character from WG2 experts including
Michael Everson Michael Everson (born January 9, 1963) is an American and Irish linguist, script encoder, typesetter, type designer and publisher. He runs a publishing company called Evertype, through which he has published over a hundred books since 2006. ...
and Andrew West, the frowning pile of poo emoji was removed from the list of emoji candidates.


Encoding

The Pile of Poo emoji is encoded as follows:


Popularity

''
ABC News ABC News is the news division of the American broadcast network ABC. Its flagship program is the daily evening newscast '' ABC World News Tonight with David Muir''; other programs include morning news-talk show ''Good Morning America'', ''Ni ...
''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 BoPET (biaxially-oriented polyethylene terephthalate) is a polyester film made from stretched polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and is used for its high tensile strength, chemical and dimensional stability, transparency, reflectivity, gas and ...
birthday balloons and cupcakes. In 2016, a
termite Termites are small insects that live in colonies and have distinct castes (eusocial) and feed on wood or other dead plant matter. Termites comprise the infraorder Isoptera, or alternatively the epifamily Termitoidae, within the order Blattode ...
mound in
Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to t ...
was transformed into a smiling poop emoji by a couple with supplies from
Kmart Kmart Corporation ( , doing business as Kmart and stylized as kmart) is an American retail company that owns a chain of big box department stores. The company is headquartered in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, United States. The company was inco ...
. According to ''
Wired ''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San Fran ...
,'' "the smiling pile of poo is something we can all identify with." The icon is a character in 2017's ''
The Emoji Movie ''The Emoji Movie'' is a 2017 American computer-animated science fiction comedy film produced by Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation, and distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing. Directed by Tony Leondis, who wrote the script with Eri ...
'', voiced by
Patrick Stewart Sir Patrick Stewart (born 13 July 1940) is an English actor who has a career spanning seven decades in various stage productions, television, film and video games. He has been nominated for Olivier, Tony, Golden Globe, Emmy, and Screen Actor ...
.


See also

* Face with Tears of Joy *
Kin no unko or "golden poo" is a Japanese cultural phenomenon. It is a symbol of good luck, as the name is a pun meaning "golden poo" and "good luck" in Japanese. By 2006, 2.7 million mobile phone charms in this form had been sold. The symbol, or something ...


References


External links


Pile of Poo
at
Emojipedia Emojipedia is an emoji reference website which documents the meaning and common usage of emoji characters in the Unicode Standard. Most commonly described as an emoji encyclopedia or emoji dictionary, Emojipedia also publishes articles and prov ...
{{Emoji navbox Symbols introduced in 1997 Emoji Feces