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-gro ...

), poop emoji (

American English American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the Languages of the United States, most widely spoken lan ...

), or poo emoji (

British English British English (BrE, en-GB, or BE) is, according to Lexico, Oxford Dictionaries, "English language, English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere". More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in ...

), 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 conversat ...

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

Unicode block A Unicode block is one of several contiguous ranges of numeric character codes (code points) of the Unicode character set that are defined by the Unicode Consortium for administrative and documentation purposes. Typically, proposals such as the ad ...

: .

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 th ...

released in 1997. Public exposure to this set was limited by high device costs. J-Phone subsequently became

Vodafone Japan 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 ...

, and is now known as SoftBank Mobile. In 1998/99, Japanese mobile operators NTT DoCoMo,

au by KDDI au, or au by KDDI, is a Japanese mobile phone operator. au is a brand marketed by KDDI in the main islands of Japan and by Okinawa Cellular in Okinawa for their mobile cellular services. au is the second-largest wireless carrier in Japan, wit ...

, 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 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. Noto Emoji KitKat 1f4a9

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. ...

, looking to expand its presence in Japan and Asia as a whole, partnered with 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 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 within the first emoji release of

Apple Color Emoji Apple Color Emoji (stylized as AppleColorEmoji) is a color typeface used on Apple platforms such as iOS and macOS to display Emoji characters. The inclusion of emoji in the iPhone and in the Unicode standard has been credited with promoting the ...

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 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 Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...

Unicode 6.0 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 2010, and to Unicode's official emoji documentation in 2015. In January 2017 there was a public outcry when recently crowned Miss Belgium,

Romanie Schotte Romanie Schotte is a Belgian model and beauty pageant titleholder from Bruges who was crowned Miss Belgium 2017 and represented Belgium at the Miss World 2017 pageant. Miss Belgium 2017 Schotte, at the time a 19-year-old Business Management stude ...

, 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 ...

photos, many taking it to condone the comment. The Belgian Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism 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 and

Andrew West Andrew or Andy West may refer to: * Andrew West (linguist) (born 1960), English linguist * Andrew West (pianist) (born 1979), English pianist * Andrew Fleming West (1853–1943), American classicist and academic administrator * Andrew J. 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, ABC World News Tonight with David Muir''; other programs include Breakfast television, morning ...

''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. 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 th ...

was transformed into a smiling poop emoji by a couple with supplies from Kmart. According to '' Wired,'' "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.

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 provi ...

{{Emoji navbox Symbols introduced in 1997 Emoji Feces

History

Encoding

Popularity

See also

References

External links