Vulcans would be very confused by emojis. The half-Vulcan first officer of the Starship Enterprise in Star Trek, Mr. Spock, would see them as an illogical means of communication. If you want to talk about someone’s posterior, he’d say, then simply “convey” that rather than sending an illogical image of a peach.
Apple announced on October 31 that a ton of new emojis will be coming with the iOS 10.2 update. You’ll soon be able to drool, cross your fingers, eat avocados, facepalm, and emoji intelligently about the squad of ducks that waddles through your backyard every so often.
One of the additions getting the most hype is the shrug emoji, and the white male shrug emoji with black hair looks exactly like a fully human Spock. It has the same brown eyes, the same haircut, and Spock definitely is confused by human behavior a majority of the time. Hence, the shrug.
We have no doubt that Spock would wholly disagree with us, and sure, Apple hasn’t officially said that the new shrug emoji is Spock. But we’re also sure that Captain Kirk would subtly poke fun at him for it, and that’s good enough for us. And it’s certainly close enough to represent him in Trekkie text messages.
