There are two shrimp emoji — one tentacled and alive, the other cooked. Three types of fish and camels with one hump or two. But there is no lobster emoji, the small piece of art people include in text messages and emails to make a point, be cute or explain through pictures what they are doing at the moment.
If you’re eating lobster in Maine, there’s no emoji to quickly explain your joy. Pictures of a crab and an ant, as one Mainer used in a vain attempt to create a picture of a lobster, just won’t do.
Fortunately, there is a campaign underway to right this cyber injustice.
An online petition has already collected its original target of 2,500 signatures. The goal has now been raised to 5,000 signatures. As of Tuesday, the Change.org petition has more than 3,500 signatories.
The petition was started earlier this month by Luke Holden, the owner of Luke’s Lobster, which has grown from one restaurant in New York City to 35 worldwide, including one in Tenant’s Harbor.
“We want to be a part of any conversation that has to do with lobster,” Holden told the BDN last week. “This is just fun for us.”
Lobster goes well beyond fun in Maine. Last year, more than 130 million pounds of lobster were caught by the state’s lobstermen. The catch was worth more than $530 million, a jump of $30 million from 2015. Lobster is by far the most plentiful and lucrative part of the state’s commercial fishery. Maine lobster are consumed around the world and many visitors to the Pine Tree State don’t consider their trip complete without eating a lobster roll overlooking the ocean.
Photos of Mainers and visitors alike, wearing plastic bibs and cracking open lobster claws, are a summertime staple. A lobster emoji would be the perfect accompaniment.
Hence the petition, which aims to convince the Unicode Consortium, the official body that sets standards for the characters that are used in software around the world. In terms of emoji, the group decides which ones are added to the growing collection of pictograms that are loaded onto smartphones, tablets and other devices. Members of the group include major computer companies, software producers, database vendors, government ministries, research institutions and user groups.
The group is scheduled to meet in October to decide on a new set of emoji — in addition to a lot of more serious business.
The lobster has been accepted as a candidate for a new emoji, along with a mosquito, hiking boot, raccoon, teddy bear, toilet paper and about 50 other emojis. There actually are three proposals seeking the addition of a lobster emoji, highlighting the widespread realization that the lobster’s omission leaves a big gap in the crustacean and food emojis. One notes that lobsters are a more frequent search term on Google than crabs and zebras, which already have emojis. The petition backed by the signature campaign notes that lobsters have been the subject of poems, books, songs, movies and are immortalized in paintings and stuffed animals.
Business Insider noticed the absence of a lobster emoji, including the crustacean in its 2014 list of “19 emoji that really should exist.”
The evidence is clear: It is time for Maine’s signature crustacean to join the emoji lineup.