Suspension Railway Emoji

Submission 11,991

Part of a series on Emoji. [View Related Entries]

About

Suspension Railway Emoji refers to an emoji of suspended railway car. The emoji began seeing use in memes once it was brought to Redditors' attentions that it was the least-used emoji in Unicode 6.0.

Origin

The Suspension Railway Emoji was included in Unicode 6.0, which was rolled out in October of 2015.^[3] On June 29th, 2017, Redditor PabstBlueRhino posted a question in /r/askreddit^[1] asking what the least-used emoji was. User infez responded by saying the Suspension Railway Emoji was the least used.

Spread

On February 11th, 2018, Redditor Thatagui^[2] posted an image to /r/me_irl that stated that the Suspension Railway Emoji was the least used emoji. The image also stated "Let's change that." The image gained over 30,000 upvotes (shown below).

After that post, several more posts involving the emoji were posted to Reddit. The day of the me_irl post, a deep fried version of the emoji was posted to /r/deepfriedmemes (shown below, left). On the 12th, a Dog Petting Photoshop featuring the emoji was posted to /r/me_irl,^[4] where it gained over 4,300 upvotes (shown below, right).

Also on the 12th, user /r/DogeCatBear^[5] posted a parody copypasta devoted to the emoji to /r/copypasta, gaining 71 upvotes. The copypasta reads:

You want to know why I love 🚟? 🚟 is a completely self-made emoji. So many other emojis are based in nostalgic childrens shows, funny faces, relatable situations, or references. Not 🚟. 🚟 is completely absurd. It's literally just an emoji of a suspension car, but more broadly it is a symbol of uphill and downhill transportation. The first person to ever upvote 🚟 did not do so out of recognition. The first person to ever upvote 🚟 did not do so because a pre-existing emoji format. The first person to ever upvote 🚟, upvoted an emoji literally pulled from the ether by sheer human creativity and willpower. 🚟 is evidence that humans can stare into the meaningless void of eternity and force their own meaning onto to it. I will always upvote 🚟.

On the 14th, an image of a suspension railway was posted to /r/europe where it gained over 12,000 upvotes in less than 24 hours^[6] (shown below, left). On the 13th, a Whisper In Ear Goosebumps edit appeared on /r/emojipasta,^[7] gaining over 850 upvotes (shown below, right). An inquiry about the emoji was posted to /r/OutOfTheLoop^[8] on the 15th.