Beyoncé dominated the conversation on Twitter Saturday night during her HBO visual album special Lemonade. While we wondered if Jay Z is safe, questioned exactly who is "Becky with the good hair" and praised the album on social media, chances are, we made sure to include the hashtag #LEMONADE.
However, since it's Beyoncé we are talking about, she has the power to do more than simply get a hashtag trending. In fact, she started an entire emoji revolution.
Sorry, eggplant, but we now have a new favorite food emoji: the lemon.
You have probably seen just about everyone using the lemon emoji on social media since the release of Bey's new music. It's been used so much that it has risen to Internet fame in what seems to be overnight, all thanks to Beyoncé.
According to Twitter, the lemon emoji has been tweeted more than two million times this month, with 62 percent of those tweets sent between April 23, the date Lemonade aired, and now.
The @Beyonce effect: We're seeing notable spikes in use of the [lemon] and [bee] emojis on Twitter. #LEMONADE pic.twitter.com/RwnQtJDFuj
— Twitter Data (@TwitterData) April 28, 2016
Twitter also reported seeing an increase in the use of the bee emoji. This makes sense, since we all know that the bee emoji represents the Queen and is the symbol of the Beyhive, the name given to Beyoncé by fans. How could you have composed a reaction tweet to the album without ending your thoughts with the bee emoji?
Put these two emojis together, and everyone immediately knows that you are talking about the new album.
It's nice to see a forgotten emoji get some loving. Beyoncé has not only made the lemon emoji popular, but changed the meaning behind it. The emoji has become a symbol for the album and everything that it stands for, like female empowerment.
Starting an Internet career for the lemon dates back to when the singer posted an Instagram photo posing with the fruit months ago. Little did we know at the time that she was teasing the new music.
A photo posted by Beyoncé (@beyonce) on Sep 20, 2015 at 8:17am PDT
Of course, when it comes to emojis, everything is better in threes. Twitter found that, since the release of Lemonade, the average number of lemon emojis used per tweet was three.
Leave it to Yoncé to make the lemon emoji an icon.
Source: Twitter
