The real meaning behind the crab emoji is darker than you think

Each time a prominent public figure dies, you might see more crab emoji 🦀 on Twitter, Reddit, and the comment section of Instagram posts. It's a not-so-subtle nod in celebration of the passing of the reign, influence, or life of a particularly controversial character.

There's been a bit of a resurgence of the crab emoji lately in response to the death of Queen Elizabeth II, particularly in Reddit subs like r/COMPLETEANARCHY and r/CuratedTumblr. All of these crab emoji are in reference to the "Crab Rave," a house song from Noisestorm that was released by Monstercat in 2018 as part of an April Fools' campaign. The music video — which has received more than 200 million views on YouTube — shows a bunch of crabs raving on an island.

The crabs are dancing. They're celebrating. They're overjoyed. They're crabs. And all to the tune of one of the more popular, standard Beat Saber song options.

Because the video was practically created in a lab for memeification, it swiftly turned into a joke online. First, according to Know Your Meme, YouTuber apandah posted a video to Twitter titled "Obama is Gone" with the song playing in the background and the crabs raving in response to then-President Barack Obama leaving office.

Since then, the meme has been simplified and morphed into just the crab emoji 🦀. Sometimes the emoji is posted just as a general hype moment but, more often than not, it's posted to say "good riddance." Some people are adding it to their social media names and bios, too.

Comedian Jaboukie Young-White posted the crab rave dance when Rush Limbaugh died. Some people posted the crab emoji when then-President Donald Trump got kicked off of social media platforms.

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This isn't the first time we've used emoji as another form of linguistic expression online.

Snake emoji 🐍 was used in the aftermath of the Taylor Swift / Kim Kardashian / Kanye West drama to call various people involved snakes. And Beyoncé fans spam people with the bee emoji 🐝 when anyone attacks Queen B. While those aren't particularly positive examples, it's fairly common for national symbols like flowers, animals, and flags to become a signal of solidarity and strength online during difficult times for nations.

Research from The Conversation shows that after the November 2015 Paris attacks, the most common support emoji were flags from countries like the UK 🇬🇧 and the U.S. 🇺🇸, alongside the French flag 🇫🇷. When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, folks used sunflower emoji 🌻 to show solidarity with Ukraine, the country's national flower.

This is all to say that if you're feeling crabby, maybe think twice before adding the emoji 🦀 to your tweet.