SYMBOLS WITH COLOURFUL STORIES

EGGPLANT

The bulbous, purple eggplant was added to the Unicode emoji set in 2011, and soon became code for the penis. In 2015, it was banned by Instagram for a while for violating its policy against sexual content. Hashtags like #eggplantFridays were being used to push nude images.

GUN

The original was a standard pistol. In 2016, amid anti-gun activism in the US, and mass shootings, Apple redesigned the emoji as a colourful squirt gun. Google, Facebook, Samsung and Twitter did too. Microsoft’s gun too looks like a water pistol now. Some still want the symbol banned.

LOBSTER

When Emojipedia published a preview of their lobster emoji, some people were horrified. A lobster has 10 legs, and this creature only 8, they cried. And so the emoji was redesigned.

DANCING WOMEN WITH BUNNY EARS

The original was meant to be a Playboy Playmate. Women’s rights activists protested, so the solo woman turned into two partygoing pals. They got so popular that men wanted one too. We now have Two Dancing

Women and Two Dancing

Men With Bunny Ears.

PEACH

The peach emoji for iOS also represents a well-sculpted butt. Some users even call it ‘the Kim butt’, after the voluptuous Kardashian. Apple’s 2016 update showed more fruit and no butt, but so upset users that a subsequent update returned the emoji to its former glory.

SALAD

The original salad emoji was lettuce, tomatoes and eggs. Vegans and vegetarians felt slighted because they ate more salad, but not eggs. So in June 2018, Google decided to remove the egg from its salad emoji to make it more inclusive. The bowl is now lettuce, tomatoes and cucumber: wholesome and 100% vegan.

MIDDLE FINGER

When Apple released a set of new emojis in 2015, it included the middle finger. Other than the fact that it doesn’t represent the rest of the hand accurately, in India, it ran afoul of protestors too. In December 2017, an Indian advocate sent a legal notice to WhatsApp calling the emoji lewd and obscene and demanding that it be removed. WhatsApp is yet to respond.

AERIAL TRAM

This is consistently the least-used emoji. But a Facebook group dedicated to transportation memes protested its removal. They urged the public to tweet the emoji from time to time — and now it’s the second-least popular emoji. The new least-popular? ABCD in a grid. Really, what is that for?

COMPILED BY JAYATI BHOLA