U.S. Sen. Angus King took a respite from the Democrat-versus-Republican battles in Congress on Friday and threw his weight into the lobster vs. crab battle.
King, an independent, sent a letter lobbying for the adoption of a lobster emoji to the non-governmental consortium that oversees the availability of emojis worldwide. The Unicode Consortium, which selects emojis for use by websites, application and operating systems worldwide, is preparing to release its next list of approved emojis in October.
“The members of the Unicode Technical Committee know better than most that emoji have become an increasingly important medium for communication, and that individuals and businesses have benefitted from being able to use a growing set of emoji options,” King wrote in his letter. “And people in Maine – as well as others across the world – understand that the lobster is a culturally- and economically-important animal.”
He noted that emojis exist for shrimp, fish and crabs, and then used Google Trends data to underscore his argument to the technology-minded members of the consortium’s technical committee. He pointed out that web searches of “lobster” outpace searches for “crab,” and that #lobster leaves #crab in the dust in Instagram searches.
“I respectfully request that the UTC include (a lobster emoji) in Unicode Version 11.0, so that people who fish, process, serve, eat, or otherwise admire the lobster can accurately express themselves in emoji form,” he wrote.
Last month entrepreneur Luke Holden, owner of a chain of lobster restaurants, started a petition drive to get the consortium to adopt a lobster emoji. His campaign, Let’s Make the Lobster Emoji Happen on Change.org had nearly 4,300 signatures as of Friday.
King sent his letter three days in advance of National Lobster Day. He and fellow U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, asked the U.S. Senate in July to designate Sept. 25 as National Lobster Day. The resolution was unanimously passed in August.
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