Boar Head Exploding

About

Boar Head Exploding is a Boar Memoji version of the Head Exploding emoji depicting a brown hog with a mushroom cloud erupting out from the top of its head. Released in September 2019 as a part of a standard Memoji pack for iOS, the emoticon has been used as a humorous, often bad-mannered reply, and later gained virality as a reaction image in memes.

Origin

On September 19th, 2019, several standard Memoji sticker sets, including a Boar Memoji set, were added to iOS 13.0.^[1] The 15 Memoji set included a boar version of the Head Exploding emoji (full set and the Boar Head Exploding Memoji shown below, left and right).

The Memoji did not see presence in memes until December 2021 when a screenshot of a fake message exchange in which the Memoji was used appeared on Reddit (shown below, left). On December 21st, 2021, Redditor Noteggs_ posted the image to the /r/comedyheaven^[2] subreddit, where it received over 54,100 upvotes in a year. On July 22nd, 2022, Redditor samarm132 then posted a similar meme to the /r/GoodFakeTexts subreddit, gaining over 3,100 upvotes in five months (shown below, right).

Spread

The image achieved viral popularity in mid-November 2022 when Twitter^[3] user @606HATRED posted a screenshot of the emoji being used to react to thirst traps, captioning the screenshot, "never sending n--des again." The post received over 15,800 retweets and 296,800 likes in three weeks.

In the following weeks, the image achieved virality as a reaction image in various memes, particularly in text message exchanges.

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References