Emojis are one of the newest waves of communication. Faster than texting, you can portray your thoughts and feelings with simple hieroglyphs—sometimes, to hilarious effect. With the recent news that 270 new emojis will be released in July—with “derelict house building” and “old personal computer” among them—many are left wondering, “Where’s the cheese?”
Vox recently touched on this subject with their explanation of where emojis come from, passed on to culture by curd nurd Matt Spiegler. The good news: anyone can submit an idea for a new, cheesy emoji. The bad news: created by the Unicode Consortium, each emoji is carefully scrutinized before being created, meaning that it can be awfully difficult for new characters to be accepted. Vox explains:
If you see an emoji that you think should exist but doesn’t, you can fill out a form and begin a long, formal process to get it into the standard. “It frequently takes years to move from an initial draft to final standardization,” the Unicode website states, explaining that each character, emoji, or whatnot is scrutinized very carefully. To get a new emoji approved, you have to prove that your proposed emoji or character is widely used and will be used after its adopted into the Unicode standard.
There is already a petition for a hot dog character, though a previous push for a taco emoji expired due to lack of support. So what’s a turophile to do? Sure, you could simply type cheese, but where’s the fun in that? Instead, try your hand at some clever emoji substitutions for popular cheeses. Or for those with more patience, you could gather your evidence and submit a proposal to the Unicode Consortium, in hopes that a cheesy wedge will make the next round of emoji additions.
Photo by Vox, story idea by Matt Spiegler
Alicia Hahn
Alicia Hahn excels at eating and enjoys writing, crosswords, and cooking (preferably with cheese). Originally from San Francisco, she moved to Boston for school and fell in love with the city (despite an annual campaign against winter). Her favorite place to be is the farmers’ market, where she finds weird and exciting ingredients to make or break her next meal.
