Emoji have revolutionized online communication, allowing us to transcend language barriers by using a picture of a taco instead of painstakingly typing out the word “taco.”
Next year, a new batch of emoji will do it all over again, especially if: your soul has been crushed, you live on a tiny island in the English Channel, and/or you enjoy root vegetables.
Who calls the shots on emoji?
The nonprofit Unicode Consortium oversees universal emoji standards.
- That’s why Apple and Android devices have the same basic symbols — though each operating system determines what the symbols actually look like.
The organization is funded through emoji sponsorships (like putting your name on a brick at the zoo, but your money is used to maintain the database instead of buying another tire swing for pandas).
- Buffalo Wild Wings sponsors the drumstick, Ballantine’s sponsors the whisky glass, and Red Lobster somehow found the money to sponsor the lobster.
- Also, for some reason: Google sponsors the hamburger, the Oakland A’s have both the elephant and a tree, and someone named Scott Spears is writing checks he better be able to cash by putting his name on the eggplant.
The 2025 emoji…
… include a highly requested face with under-eye bags, plus a beet, a harp, and a shovel — perfect for saying, “Bring your harp to the beet field, I need to bury a body.”
Less obviously useful are the purple splatter and the fingerprint, but they’re a dream compared to the new flag and the leafless tree.
- The flag is for Sark, one of the Channel Islands, known for outlawing cars and having no light pollution.
- The tree, while seemingly a perfect pairing with spooky emoji like the bat, was actually introduced to raise awareness about droughts and climate change.
We can’t even put a fun button on this. That’s just a downer.
