This morning Mashable asked the all-important Question of 2014: “Why is everyone so obsessed with emoji?” They talked to a few experts, got behind the psychology of those simple little digital images dominating social media feeds, and declared “Hearts,” the crowd-pleasing hearts-as-eyes smiley face emoticon, as the most popular one of all, tweeted out a staggering 342 million times as of this month.
But if Ringo Starr has anything to say about it, the “Peace Sign” will soon be in the top spot. The former Beatle drummer, tirelessly touring with his All Star Band, has a very concerning addiction to emoji.
It started simple enough. The peace sign… a smiley-face wearing sunglasses… a few stars here and there. Photos of him and others were punctuated with a rose, or clapping hands, or more peace signs.
Then, yesterday morning after a show in Atlantic City — the damn didn’t just break, it exploded. Starr tweeted out a 13-emoji tweet with NO WORDS. The sunglasses smiley face, the peace sign, clapping hands, flowers a motherfucking octopus, a half-moon, a god-damn horse, and even a compact disc.
The man has lost control.
We’re unable to embed tweets with emoji for some reason, so we took some screen grabs to document the insanity. It’s as if Starr is saying “Help!” without saying anything at all — and can only wonder what George woulda thought about all this.
