There is a war going on over the monkey emojis and you need to choose a side

An intentionally misspelled Twitter poll about monkey emoji has developed into an intense 100,000+ person debate about Japanese history, unicode and the language of the web.

Comedian Jonny Sun's poll asks readers to decide if the three monkey emoji (🙈 🙉 🙊 ) are three individual monkeys or, in fact, one monkey making three separate faces.

With more than 100,000 votes and three days left to go, the poll is shockingly neck-and-neck, with 51% choosing the one monkey option and 49% choosing the three monkey option. 

Sun himself tells me that he sides with the slim majority.

"I think there's one [monkey]," Sun said, during a phone interview. "My argument is that the way people use them isn't to represent the see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil monkeys, they're using them like they use other emojis, to represent themselves."

Sun's point (as wrong as it is) is that while the monkey emoji were created to represent the three wise monkeys of Japanese myth, they are most commonly used to represent oneself.

Not ready to give up, I pressed Sun, asking him if the yellow smiley faces were all one man experiencing separate emotions.

"Yeah," he replied. Absolutely ludicrous.

"It is insane how close it is," Sun said. "It’s such a silly, innocuous thing and people are just so... when there is a side to be chosen, people will choose that side and defend it with their life, even if it’s like, three monkeys."

Of all the issues separating the country into two drastically opposing sides, the monkey poll is certainly the most fun.

Of all the issues separating the country into two drastically opposing sides, the monkey poll is certainly the most fun.

"I think part of why it’s blowing up is because it’s a silly thing you can have an opinion on, in contrast to the crazy political spirit of the country right now," said Sun.

Fittingly, Sun's poll is rapidly closing in on receiving as many votes as the 2016 Kansas Presidential Caucus. 

When asked if he were too dug in to his one monkey belief to hear reason, Sun replied, optimistically, "I mean, I'm always open."

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