Will we get a sad poop emoji? Well, there’s a process …

Whether it’s a stuffed toy, a window sticker, or – if you can imagine it – a picture on your phone, the poop emoji is everywhere. It even appeared in the (appropriately execrable) Emoji Movie this year. And this is how it – and all its tiny, pixelated brethren – came to be.
We have a smiling pile of poop. What about one that’s sad?

There’s loaf of bread and a croissant. But where’s the sliced bagel?

How can our emotional vocabulary be complete without a teddy bear, a lobster, a Petri dish or a tooth?

These are the kind of questions that trigger heated debates and verbal bomb tossing – or at least memos with bursts of capital letters – among members of the group burdened with deciding which new emojis make it onto our phones and computer screens each year.

And now more people are getting in on the act.

The Unicode Consortium is tasked with setting the global standard for the icons. It’s a heady responsibility and it can take years from inspiration – Hey, why isn’t there a dumpling? – to a new symbol being added to our phones.

That’s because deciding whether a googly-eyed turd should express a wider range of emotions is not the frivolous undertaking it might appear to be. Picking the newest additions to our roster of cartoonish glyphs, from deciding on their appearance to negotiating rules that allow vampires but bar the likenesses of Robert Pattinson or Dracula, actually has consequences for modern communication.