The Awesome Lobster Emoji!
Posted: February 2018 - The year of the crustacean!
Posted: February 2018 - The year of the crustacean!
The Lobster Emoji (U+1F99E 🦞 LOBSTER) is a totally cool emoji that was added to the Unicode standard in 2018. It's a super detailed depiction of a lobster. This little guy made his debut after a bunch of people got frustrated with the *lack* of crustacean emojis. Seriously, only a crab and a shrimp? Boring! A petition was started by a Mainer named Luke Holden, and even a U.S. Senator from Maine got involved.
It's the talk of the web!
In February 2018, the Unicode Consortium was like, "Yeah, Lobster!" and added it as part of Unicode 11.0. There was a bit of a hiccup with the first draft design on Emojipedia because it was missing two legs. Whoops! But they fixed it up after users pointed out the anatomical error.
| Emoji Info | |
|---|---|
| Unicode Name: | LOBSTER |
| Unicode Decimal: | 129438 |
| Unicode Hex: | U+1F99E |
| UTF-8: | F0 9F A6 9E |
| UTF-16: | D83E DD9E |
| Numeric Char Ref: | 🦞 / 🦞 |
It all started in August 2017 when the Unicode Consortium dropped a list of 67 potential new emojis. A candidate lobster emoji caught the eye of Luke Holden, owner of Luke's Lobsters. He was like, "We NEED this!" and started a petition on Change.org called "Make the Lobster Emoji Happen." It totally blew up, getting 1,500 signatures in just one day!
Senator Angus King of Maine also threw his support behind the lobster, even writing a letter to the Unicode Consortium. He pointed out how much lobster means to Maine's economy and how many people search for it online.
When the draft design came out, people on Twitter noticed it was missing two legs! Emojipedia, who made the draft, quickly released a corrected version with all ten legs (including the claws). Some folks argued about whether emojis *needed* to be anatomically perfect, but hey, we got our ten-legged friend in the end!
Special Announcement: Senator Angus King tweeted: "Great news for Maine - we're getting a lobster emoji!!!" More details
So, how are people using this awesome lobster emoji? Well, it's got some pretty cool uses:
In 2018, transgender rights activists started using the lobster emoji to represent themselves. It's partly because lobsters can exhibit gynandromorphism (having both male and female characteristics), and partly as a way to campaign for a dedicated transgender flag emoji. They even started the hashtag #ClawsOutForTrans! It's a powerful way to express identity when a specific emoji isn't available.
One activist, Charlie Craggs, said, "Surely we deserve the same rights you have afforded crustaceans?" -- a pretty spot-on observation!
For some speakers of Brazilian Portuguese, the lobster emoji has become a verb meaning 'to kill oneself'. This weird usage apparently started after a viral video showed a lobster jumping into boiling oil, seemingly committing suicide. When spoken, they pronounce it "lagostar" – the verb form of 'lobster'!
Pretty wild, huh?
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