Emoji Makers Went to War over a New Frowning Poop Emoji

A great schism has broken out within the organization that oversees the selection of new emojis, according to a new report from BuzzFeed News. But it's not a fight over the layering of cheeseburger ingredients or what the mouthless smiley means: The emoji overlords are reportedly battling over the need for a frowning poop emoji.

According to BuzzFeed, new emojis are decided on by a group called the Unicode Consortium, which, despite having a name like a villainous organization in a Dan Brown book, is mostly made up of typographers and unicode developers. The consortium is currently debating which new emojis will make it into the next update, and some of the proposed additions are a cupcake, a peacock, a smiley with a party hat, and the aforementioned sad coil of poo.

"FROWNING POO can express a range of meanings that the smiling poo emoji cannot," a 12-page proposal for the new emoji reads. "For instance, if someone wants to share whether they had a healthy versus unpleasant bowel movement (particularly in the context of travel or gastrointestinal health), the smiling poo is limited and may not always be suitable."

Not everyone at the consortium agrees, though. Two typographers, Andrew West and Michael Everson, are leading the fight to keep the frowning feces off our phones forever.

"Organic waste isn't cute," Everson wrote in an October 22 memo.

"Will we have a CRYING PILE OF POO next?" He continued, flaunting his apparent typographer's love for capitalization. "PILE OF POO WITH TONGUE STICKING OUT? PILE OF POO WITH QUESTION MARKS FOR EYES? PILE OF POO WITH KARAOKE MIC? Will we have to encode a neutral FACELESS PILE OF POO?"

West agreed, saying that the now-beloved smiling poop emoji was a bad move to begin with, and that expanding the turd's range of emotion "is even worse."

"As an ordinary user, I don't want this kind of crap on my phone," Everson added.

West and Everson's screed against the sad shit has apparently ignited a bigger conversation within the consortium's ranks about the approval process for new emojis, according to BuzzFeed. It doesn't look like the pouty poo is going to make it into the next round of emojis, but the debate is a fascinating look at how intensely people scrutinize the goofy cartoons we use for Venmo transactions. It makes sense—these are the new generation of cartoon heroes, after all.