iOS Question Mark Box ⍰

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About

iOS Question Mark Box ⍰ refers to an iOS autocorrect bug that replaced the letter "i" with the emoji ⍰.

Origin

On October 31st, 2017, Apple released the iOS 11.1 update for iPhone and iPad mobile devices. In the coming days, iOS 11 users began noticing a glitch that would autocorrect the letter "i" to "⍰" while typing on their mobile device.

Spread

On November 5th, Redditor catitobandito submitted a post asking "Why do I keep seeing a ! with a ? and a box around it on certain posts?" to /r/OutOfTheLoop,^[1] to which several Redditors responded that it was a bug in iOS 11.1. On November 6th, Apple Support^[3] recommended setting up "Text Replacement" to fix the bug. Meanwhile, Twitter user @hot_kommodity_ tweeted a crying reaction GIF in response to the bug, which gathered upwards of 4,700 likes and 3,200 retweets over the next four days (shown below).

On November 7th, the @lady_capulet^[3] Instagram feed posted a photograph of singer Whitney Houston with the caption "And A ⍰⍰⍰⍰⍰ will always love you" (shown below, left). That day, Cosmopolitan^[5] published a "listicle": titled "18 Funny iPhone Glitch Tweets That Will Make You Want to Throw Your Phone at a Wall." On November 8th, Instagram user @boywithnojob submitted a photo of a person getting a tattoo of the sentence "A ⍰ love you" (shown below, right).

On November 9th, Redditor go_be_viola submitted a post asking "Why are there all these memes about A (question mark in a box) all of a sudden?" to /r/OutOfTheLoop.^[2] That day, Apple fixed the bug with the release of iOS 11.1.1 In the coming days, several news sites published articles about the glitch, including NY Mag,^[6] ARS Technica,^[9] TIME Magazine,^[10] Business Insider,^[11] Sunday Express^[12], Forbes,^[13] Mac Rumors,^[15] Apple Insider,^[14] Telegraph,^[16] Emojipedia^[7] and Thought Catalog.^[8]