Skull emoji

An emoji depicting a skull was originally included in the proprietary emoji sets from SoftBank Mobile and au by KDDI. Using these sets as a source,^[1] the Unicode Consortium included the skull emoji in their Unicode 6.0 standard, released in October 2010.^[2] Prior to that, the skull emoji was available for iPhone users in Japan, initially using a specific Private Use Area for compatibility with SoftBank's set.^[3] Following the discovery that installing Japanese apps unlocked the emoji keyboard, Apple released emoji support worldwide in 2011.^[4]

Throughout the 2010s, the skull emoji retained its original meaning, symbolizing death or goth subculture.^[5][6] In 2016, Wired reported that people were more likely to use the skull emoji when they posted online about their phones being broken, signifying that they are "socially dead".^[7] The emoji had limited popularity, ranking 92nd among the most used emojis on Twitter in 2015.^[8] It reached the top 10 in the United States by 2019, but remained outside the top 50 in other countries.^[9]

In the early 2020s, the skull emoji was popularized by Generation Z, the demographic cohort of people born between the mid-1990s and the early 2010s, who started using it as a replacement for the phrases "I'm dead" or "I'm dying" – short for "I'm dying of laughter" – to express joy or happiness,^[10] as well as laughter.^[11] They viewed Face with Tears of Joy emoji, the emoji previously used to convey these emotions, as "uncool",^[12] due to its association with older generations.^[11] Before this meaning of the skull emoji became popular, in 2015, U+1F47B 👻 GHOST was used instead.^[13] Over time, the skull emoji has evolved to represent a wide range of emotions,^[14] including embarrassment.^[15]

Adam Aleksic of The Washington Post viewed the skull emoji as a symbol that represents humor or irony and believed that it became a punctuation mark. Comparing the emoji to a tone tag, he wrote: "Punctuating the text with a skull lightens the tone and signals humility".^[16]

Kayleigh Dray of Stylist thought the popularization of the skull emoji was related to the COVID-19 pandemic and the "dystopian pandemic nightmare" it resulted in. "[T]he laugh-cry emoji has died a sad little death and been replaced with an ever-so-appropriate skull", wrote the journalist.^[17]

• LOL
• Glossary of Generation Z slang