A Century of Chaos in a Single Emoji
The first rule of Fight Cloud is you do not stop talking about Fight Cloud
The most commonly used emoji are overwhelmingly positive and yet online dialogue doesn’t always feel so cheerful. We doom scroll. We rage bait. We hate read. In these moments when we indulge in inflammatory engagement, words often fail us and smashing the thumbs down emoji just doesn’t cut it.
A new fighter has entered the chat: The Fight Cloud () emoji.
Whether you know it as the “Big Ball of Violence” from Looney Tunes, a “dust cloud” from the Sims, or as a "chaotic rumble” from the Saturday morning newspaper cartoons, the fight cloud remains the world's most recognizable way to denote a fight. Born a century ago, this cloud, punctuated with stars, has told us to brace ourselves: things are getting messy.
The Art of Not Showing
Before fight clouds, artists had to draw every messy detail of a physical struggle. That is until the era of Felix the Cat and Mickey Mouse which pioneered the slapstick grammar of comics and animation. This is when we see dust clouds, or fight clouds, operate as a visual pronoun: a way to hide the details of the fight and let our brains do the inferential work.
While developing the emoji proposal for fight cloud I worked with Neil Cohn, Associate Professor at Tilburg University and author of The Visual Language of Comics. Neil calls the fight cloud a “cheat code.” “With a [fight] cloud, you don’t need to draw the actual fight or the actual transformation... it pushes people to infer what they aren’t seeing directly.” It signals an epic event without the need for graphic violence, or detailed accuracy. It acknowledges tension but keeps it silly.” Like, when you’re arguing over which actor gave the definitive performance as Batman.
Not All Heroes Wear Capes: Fight Cloud, Technical hero
The fight cloud emoji also aids in a major technical milestone: the final step in a decade-long journey to ensure all human emoji have skin tone options.
Fun Fact: There is a lot of technical complexity behind those smiling eyes in your emoji. Zero Width Joiners (ZWJ), or "digital glue", are hidden characters that tell our devices to fuse separate icons into one. It’s the same tech that gives us lady technologist (👩+💻= 👩💻), heart on fire (❤️+🔥=❤️🔥), handshakes (🫱🏻+🫲🏿=🫱🏻🫲🏿), kissing couples (👩🏻+❤️+💋+👨🏿=👩🏻❤️💋👨🏿) and now, it's finally the wrestlers' turn.
By using the fight cloud, Unicode can now create Wrestlers that represent any combination of skin tones. There’s even a handy-dandy equation to illustrate it:
👩🏿👩🏽= [👩] + [Skin Tone 🏿] + [ZWJ] + + [ZWJ] + [ 👩] + [Skin Tone 🏾] . Don’t worry, you won’t be tested on this.
One Cloud, Many “Poofs”
Because the cloud represents a “period of time,” its utility goes somewhere beyond the other action-adjacent emoji like collision 💥. As Neil Cohn explains, “The most interesting difference is duration. [Fight] clouds mean multiple things happening over a period of time —punching, kicking, biting — while action stars show a single sudden event.’”
Transformation: Use it for a “magical poof” or a wardrobe change 🧍🦸 or a glow up 🐥🐓
Sexy time: All emoji are sex emoji if you use a little imagination. 💕💞
Arguments: A visual for those heated “disagreements” in the comments section
Whether we’re wrestling with a difficult decision or just describing a chaotic family visit, the fight cloud is proof that sometimes, the best way to get everything out there is to hide it inside a cloud.
Editor’s note: Neil Cohn’s new book, Speaking in Pictures, is now available! You can order from most major bookstores or via his site.
Will we get 18.1 or 19.0