# Skull emoji

The Skull emoji (💀) is an emoji depicting a human skull. It was added to Unicode's Emoticon block in October 2010. Originally representing death or goth subculture, the emoji grew to represent a wide range of emotions by the early 2020s, including joy, laughter, and embarrassment. It is especially popular among members of Generation Z.

## Development

An emoji depicting a skull was originally included in the proprietary emoji sets from SoftBank Mobile and au by KDDI. Using these sets as a source, the Unicode Consortium included the skull emoji in their Unicode 6.0 standard, released in October 2010. Prior to that, the skull emoji was available for iPhone users in Japan, initially using a specific Private Use Area for compatibility with SoftBank's set. Following the discovery that installing Japanese apps unlocked the emoji keyboard, Apple released emoji support worldwide in 2011.
Character information :
| Preview | 💀 | 💀 |
| Unicode name | SKULL | SKULL |
| Encodings | decimal | hex |
| Unicode | 128128 | U+1F480 |
| UTF-8 | 240 159 146 128 | F0 9F 92 80 |
| UTF-16 | 55357 56448 | D83D DC80 |
| GB 18030 | 148 57 214 50 | 94 39 D6 32 |
| Numeric character reference | &#128128; | &#x1F480; |
| Shift JIS (au by KDDI) | 246 209 | F6 D1 |
| Shift JIS (SoftBank 3G) | 247 92 | F7 5C |
| 7-bit JIS (au by KDDI) | 118 83 | 76 53 |
| Emoji shortcode | :skull: | :skull: |
| Google name (pre-Unicode) | SKULL | SKULL |
| CLDR text-to-speech name | skull | skull |
| Google substitute string | | |

## Evolution of meaning and usage

Throughout the 2010s, the skull emoji retained its original meaning, symbolizing death or goth subculture. In 2016, Wired reported that people were more likely to use the skull emoji when they posted online about their phones being broken, signifying that they are "socially dead". The emoji had limited popularity, ranking 92nd among the most used emojis on Twitter in 2015. It reached the top 10 in the United States by 2019, but remained outside the top 50 in other countries. In the early 2020s, the skull emoji was popularized by Generation Z, the demographic cohort of people born between the mid-1990s and the early 2010s, who started using it as a replacement for the phrases "I'm dead" or "I'm dying" – short for "I'm dying of laughter" – to express joy or happiness, as well as laughter. They viewed Face with Tears of Joy emoji, the emoji previously used to convey these emotions, as "uncool", due to its association with older generations. Before this meaning of the skull emoji became popular, in 2015, the ghost emoji (👻) was used instead. Over time, the skull emoji has evolved to represent a wide range of emotions, including embarrassment.

## Reception

Adam Aleksic of The Washington Post viewed the skull emoji as a symbol that represents humor or irony and believed that it became a punctuation mark. Comparing the emoji to a tone tag, he wrote: "Punctuating the text with a skull lightens the tone and signals humility".
Kayleigh Dray of Stylist thought the popularization of the skull emoji was related to the COVID-19 pandemic and the "dystopian pandemic nightmare" it resulted in. "[T]he laugh-cry emoji has died a sad little death and been replaced with an ever-so-appropriate skull", wrote the journalist.