A petition has been circulating online courtesy of New York-headquartered restaurant company Luke’s Lobster calling for the addition of a lobster emoji to the lexicon of popular texting illustrations.
The non-profit organization responsible for picking the next class of emojis listed the lobster graphic among 67 drafted emoji candidates during the August 2017 Unicode Consortium. The final selection will be made at the Q4 Unicode meeting sometime in October, and the chosen emojis will start appearing in smartphone textboxes in 2018.
The team at Luke’s Lobster is doing its part to promote the lobster emoji to the top of the heap by spurring an online petition through Change.org, hoping to acquire 5,000 signatures in support of the crustacean graphic. While a number of seafood and sea creature emojis are already available, the lack of lobster has left the big picture incomplete, according to Luke’s.
“The emoji sea is filled with crab, shrimp, octopus, squid, whale, spouting whale, blowfish (?) and even non-fish-human-deep-sea-diver! And out of the water, shrimp gets extra love with tempura! There is a large void in the shape of our favorite Maine lobster,” the company wrote in its petition, which has earned 3,465 signatures as of 28 August.
According to Luke’s, over 3,500 posts have been made on social media channels Instagram and Twitter decrying the lack of a lobster emoji, featuring the hashtag #NoLobsterEmoji. The company itself says it gets asked daily about the emoji’s absence.
“We know you want it – you ask us why there is #NoLobsterEmoji daily. Now we finally have the chance to help get it. Sign our petition. Fill this clawed void. Let's make the Lobster Emoji real,” Luke’s concluded in its petition.
