But like, c'mon, that emoji is too bizarre and cartoonish to be called a "Pile of Poo." Right? That's like seeing the giant Snoopy balloon in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and calling it "a dog."

Anyway let's get into its origins. One myth to dispel right away: it's not chocolate ice cream. It is shaped exactly like the top of the ice cream emoji, but that's a weird artistic overlap and nothing more. It's the opposite of that story about how Homer Simpson was almost secretly Krusty. Ain't no chocolate in that swirl.

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The poo emoji's origin dates back to the origin of all emoji. Super short version: in 1998, one designer working for one Japanese cell phone carrier created 176 tiny images. Then his company attached each image to a code point. Those 176 images + code points were the first emojis. So on that company's phones, each image could be typed like a letter, number, or other character.

Technical stuff here: when you type a letter or number or other character, you are selecting a code point. Thanks to a digital non-profit named Unicode, the code points for letters and numbers and other characters match up across all digital devices and platforms. Thanks to Unicode's efforts, I can type the phrase "thanks to Unicode's efforts" and know those same letters will pop up on your device.

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The first emoji were a hit. Other Japanese cell carriers rolled out their own sets, to keep up. But the different carriers did not coordinate their emoji images or their emoji code points. So if you texted a friend who had a different cell phone provider, your [smiling face] could output as [frowning face] or [middle finger] or [terrifying string of broken code].

Luckily, Unicode adopted emoji and standardized the code points in 2010. But for the 12 years before that, emoji were a lawless mess. The emoji system was like the Wild West!