Skull Emoji 💀

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About

Skull Emoji 💀 is the image of a human skull included in the emoji deck of all text message platforms. While initially commonplace around Halloween each year after its introduction in the early 2010s, the emoji took on new meaning in the early 2020s as it saw use among Generation Z social media users as slang to express "I'm dead from laughing."

Origin

The skull emoji was added to Unicode 6.0 in 2010 and Emoji 1.0 in 2015.^[1] It is also known as "death" and "skeleton." It is available on many text messaging platforms, including Google, Apple, Skype, Samsung, Twitter, Whatsapp and many others.

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According to Emojipedia,^[1] the emoji sees a surge of use particularly around Halloween each year. In 2018, Dictionary.com^[2] wrote the skull was used as a more lighthearted way to comment on posts relating to death or scary things.

However, the meaning of skull emoji took a turn in the early 2020s, as younger internet users began using it in place of the crying laughing emoji. On January 25th, 2021, Emojipedia published a blog post by Jeremy Burge,^[3] who noted:

"It's common wisdom on TikTok that the laughing crying emoji is for boomers. And by boomers I mean anyone over the age of 35… For many commenters, 💀 has replaced 😂 as the acceptable way to laugh. 💀 Skull says this was so funny I have died from laughter, therefore 💀 = “I'm dead”.

The blog post led to further media coverage of the so-called "death" of the crying laughing emoji and its replacement with the skull emoji. CNN,^[4] The Guardian^[5] and The Daily Mail^[6] were among publications that wrote about the rise of the skull emoji in 2021.

Still, despite the fretting over the replacement of the crying laughing emoji, the skull emoji was not among the top 10 most-used emojis in 2021, while "crying laughing" was number 1, according to a report from the New York Times.^[7]

I Forgor 💀

The Skull Emoji saw consistent use in the I Forgor meme, as it was inspired by a tweet that used the emoji.

On February 5th, 2021, Twitter user @ItsNotSeabass tagged Wallmart's Twitter account, writing, "Hey @Walmart I have a question." After the @walmarthelp Twitter account replied, "How can we be of assistance?", @ItsNotSeabass responded, "I forgor 💀," likely mistyping "I forgot" due to R and T being next to each other on a standard QWERTY keyboard. The tweet (shown below) received over 750 retweets and 2,200 likes in five months.