Yeah, you read that correctly. Yesterday, the Unicode Consortium – the organization responsible for creating the emojis on your precious smartphones – announced that 37 new emoji characters would be added to Unicode 8.0. The Consortium also announced that the new emoji characters would be added today. Today! And among the new emojis being added? That damn taco emoji we’ve all been asking for! TACO TUESDAY ON A WEDNESDAY, Y’ALL!
(BuzzFeed / Unicode)
Since the beginning of time (read: the emoji), users everywhere have been asking the tortilla gods to bless us with a taco emoji. And, sadly, we’ve found ourselves disappointed for many years. Back in February, Apple finally gave an update to its emojis, introducing a racially diverse group of emojis – from varying skin tones on humankind figures to a diverse set of national flags; however, users were disappointed upon discovering that food diversity still remained an issue (i.e., there was still no taco emoji). Now, finally, we get what we’ve been asking for.
(Unicode)
Despite their inherently jovial nature, emojis have surprisingly become deeply ingrained in our societal canvas. For the past two United States Presidential State of the Unions, emoji versions of each transcript were tweeted live. And, even outside of the digital world, emojis have infiltrated our everyday lives, with people wearing poop emoji shirts in the streets of New York, Miami, or wherever else. At the end of last year, even childhood science hero and renowned scientist Bill Nye explained the evolution of emoji.
While this announcement by the Unicode Consortium is certainly exciting, it won’t necessarily guarantee that all of the announced emojis (including said taco emoji) will definitely be added to the emoji collections on iOS or Android – it all depends on whether Apple and Google ultimately decide on adding them (which, let’s be honest, how could they not?).
Keep your eyes open for a system update and see whether you get #dattacoemoji.