When it comes to imaginary holidays, World Emoji Day is a fabulous excuse to celebrate. The ubiquitous illustrations we use to convey feelings like happiness, anger and love for doughnuts are now taking over Twitter, one smiley face at a time.
The US Army wished everyone a happy World Emoji Day Tuesday with an image of soldiers running up a hill with grimacing yellow faces in place of their real ones.
NASA got in on the fun by offering an emoji brain teaser, using the symbols to describe all the planets of the solar system in order.
For #WorldEmojiDay, what are we describing here in emojis?
Our single
+ its closest planet
Theplanet
Our home+ our neighbor
The Red Planet
Thegiant
The orb w/ the's
The ice giants
The world w/ theglacier
Find out: https://t.co/jdygdlpqyB pic.twitter.com/WAoXEP7AKe
— NASA (@NASA) July 17, 2018
Iconic blue muppet Cookie Monster expressed love for his favorite emoji: the cookie, not surprisingly. "For @MeCookieMonster, there's only one emoji that truly matters," wrote Sesame Street.
Some people got creative by building images and words out of emojis. Dolly Parton's official Twitter account shared a combination of musical notes, hearts and butterflies that formed a big red heart with "Dolly" at the center.
DOLLY
#WorldEmojiDay
— Dolly Parton (@DollyParton) July 17, 2018
Puerto Rico rendered its flag using round emojis and a single star emoji.
Happy #WorldEmojiDay from Puerto Rico!
— Puerto Rico
Fans of the TV series Lost can reminisce about the show by reviewing the entire plot as told by emojis from the @TheLOSTFans Twitter account. No, it doesn't make the ending any clearer.
Breakfast restaurant chain Waffle House is using World Emoji Day as a platform to lobby for a waffle emoji. It started with a sad tweet reading "Wish we could celebrate #WorldEmojiDay…. #wheresthewaffleemoji" and escalated to a full-scale pleading.
As part of a longer message, Waffle House wrote, "In the myriad of emoji choices the waffle has gone completely unrepresented." The chain acknowledges that a waffle emoji is a candidate for the next official round of approved emojis, but it also asks its fans to call on Unicode, Apple and Google to get behind the waffle.
Perhaps the oddest tweet of all comes from an unlikely place, Tampa International Airport in Florida. The airport posted a photo of a United passenger jet taking off with an Apple "dashing away" emoji coming out of its rear.
"Pardon me if I was rude, it was not me, it was my fuel," wrote Tampa International, turning the emoji into a fart joke.
Way to go, Tampa International Airport. You win World Emoji Day!
Batteries Not Included: The CNET team reminds us why tech is cool.
CNET en Español: Get all your tech news and reviews in Spanish.
