Laura Ustick, a third-generation general manager of the Superdawg Drive-In in Wheeling, Illinois, is leading the charge to get a hot dog icon added into the Emoji lexicon, calling the absence “a slight against the hot-dog community.”
I don’t know if it’s so much a “slight” since Emojis are Japanese in origin, and while there’s pizza, ice cream and a doughnut — there’s also a bento box, fish cake, sushi and ramen, just for starters. But sure, let’s hear her out. From the WSJ:
“When we want to write something cute on Twitter, it’s just not there,” Ms. Ustick lamented, sitting in a small office in the restaurant where visitors are greeted by a mock-up of her proposed hot-dog emoji.
Other fans are pushing for symbols like cupcakes, bacon and unicorns. That’s not to mention the Facebook page dedicated to the proposition: “The Universe Demands a Taco Emoji.”
So the most in-demand Emojis are currently a hot dog and a taco? Suddenly it all makes sense. I know Gina would approve.
Ms. Ustick, for instance, is pursuing her hot-dog quest in a somewhat circuitous fashion, with a petition addressed to President Barack Obama and Shigetaka Kurita, a Japanese creator of early emojis. So far, she has secured nearly 300 signatures and set her hopes on “the power of the masses.”
Besides her petition, she says she spends about five hours a day on social media, plugging the hashtag #HotDogEmoji on Twitter to food celebrities and posting memes like “May the #HotDogEmoji Be With You” on Facebook.
Holy crap you guys, she’s taking this all the way to the White House? You don’t mess with a woman with 300 signatures. Maybe it’s just me, but this all seems like an awful lot of effort just to be able to put a cute icon of a hot dog into your social media marketing. Then again I’m sure people said the same thing to Florence Nightingale and now people die less of dysentery, so maybe she’s on to something here.