Just some pop culture proof that we’ve reached peak emoji

Unless you’ve been hiding in some very sneaky and obscure places on the Internet, you’re probably familiar with emoji — those Japanese pictographs that you can insert into text messages. Personal fave: Monkey with paws over his mouth.

The images, pictures of everything from food to facial expressions, have so fully taken over that last summer the New York Times published an essay on the emoji having conquered the written word. You can buy emoji sweatpants and an emoji translation of Moby Dick. 

But you know how we know that emoji has reached its apex? Emoji has transcended the recesses of our phone-lives and entered the forum of pop that even the older generations present in our lives understands. Example: This week’s New Yorker cover.

The cover, “Clinton’s Emoji” by artist Barry Blitt, cheekily refers to Clinton’s past photo ops, as well as her potential presidential bid. Blitt presents a series of Hillary emoji: Hillary in sunglasses, like that famous photo of her checking her phone in shades, Hillary with heart eyes, Hillary with an angel’s halo, angry Hillary, sleeping Hillary, jubilant Hillary, and, of course, one of Bill, too. If only we could update our keyboard to have that set of faces, we would use them constantly.

Once you make the cover of The New Yorker, it’s fair to say that as a trend, you’ve peaked. It’s also fair to say you might get a call from an aunt this week about what emoji and bitmoji are.

This New Yorker cover has put the national emoji explosion into hyper-relief for us (not that we’re complaining! We love emoji!) and has caused us to reflect on other celeb-style emoji action that we’re seeing everywhere.

You probably have the emoji keyboard on your phone, but many peeps are taking things a step further by using the app bitmoji. Basically emoji 2.0: you can even make an avatar of yourself as an emoji or, create a cartoon version of a celebrity. Emoji, Bitmoji, Hillary-moji. So much is happening in this world but we’re so down.

Just a few fave celeb bitmoji before we go.

The folks over at SugarScape emoji-ed Ed Sheeran with fantastic results.

In honor of the fourth season finale, Girls introduced Hannah and Shoshanna bitmoji. Which of course, we love.

Lucy Hale as Left Shark is a pop culture frenzy of feeling.

Victoria Beckham waking up in the morning.

This is all just to say that it’s here. Peek emoji has arrived. And we are not complaining.

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