The apocalyptic tale that turned this cockroach into an emoji

An unpleasant cockroach became one of the new emojis that arrived to smartphones this 2020. But if its inclusion could have surprised some, the story that facilitated its approval is even more striking.

Anyone has the possibility to submit an emoji proposal to the Unicode Consortium, a non-profit organization that coordinates the development of the Unicode standard, the character encoding standard.

The proposal, however, must demonstrate that the emoji will be used by people. And its authors, Jason Li, Melissa Thermidor and Amanda Hickman, achieved it with a particular story: our culture for the death of the human race.

“Adding a cockroach emoji would not only benefit the current insect collection of small animals, but also ensure that if cockroaches survive humans in the future, at least they have an emoji too,” they stated in their February 2019 proposal.

According to the proposal revealed by The Verge, despite popular belief, cockroaches are unlikely to survive a nuclear war. But if they don’t make it through an apocalyptic scenario the emoji would also allow to reflect humans who do.

“Cockroaches will be a versatile emoji that can be used in several ways,” they reason, from " a household pest", to symbolize “something that is difficult to get rid of”; or “to refer to a survivor in a nuclear winter”.

In fact, the proposal also included a proposal for that scenario: a cockroach, a symbol of radioactivity and a snowflake.

What was the real source of inspiration?

Despite the appealing story, Li posted a Twitter thread revealing his true source of inspiration: a childhood in Hong Kong plagued by cockroaches.

As he recounted, the emoji was intended as a tribute to a “plague,” but then Hong Kong police began calling pro-democracy protesters “cockroaches.”

In this way, the cockroaches became a meme against police brutality, so now Li has “very, very mixed feelings” about the emoji.