It wasn’t until the Internet began comparing the poo emoji to Apple’s popular poo emoji that I realised what the fuss was about. After seeing the comparison I was still unsure of what the fuss was all about.
But I began to wonder why some people see an enormous turd, when it is clearly a droplet of Hershey’s chocolate with the iconic Kiss flag on top?
Understanding the cognitive processes that underlie visual recognition helps explain everything from Hershey Kiss Poop Emojis to how we see animals in clouds or Mother Mary’s face on a piece toast.
How did our brain go from kiss to poo?
The retina is the lining of the inner surface. When we focus on an object, we are focusing the light onto it. This light causes a series of chemical and electric cascades which result in nerve impulses being sent to the optical nerve. The optic nerve extends from behind your eyes all the way to the visual cortex in the brain. Your palms will be hovering above your visual cortex if you fold your arms behind your head while leaning back in your seat.
Hands behind the head. Head by Shutterstock
Visual cortex tells us the Hershey logo is in a triangle shape and has a dark background with a lighter color. It doesn’t tell us much more than that. To make sense of shapes, the visual cortex needs to recruit other brain regions, called association areas.
Scientists have identified two major pathways that are involved in object recognition. The dorsal flow is a pathway that originates from the visual cortex and travels to the sides and top of the brain. It recognises the location of objects in space. The dorsal flow is what allows us to see the flag on top the triangle.
The ventral flow, on the contrary, is a projection from the visual cortex towards the underside. This pathway recognizes the little flag, brown triangle and tiny triangle as a Hershey Kiss.
What does it do? This ventral stream actually communicates with areas of the mind responsible for attention and memory. We recognize the image as a Kiss due to its iconic shape and the way that it stands out in comparison with the text logo. But, more importantly, we remember seeing the candy previously. We also recognize the image as the poo emoji due to its colour and silhouette.
Little innocent packages. Meddy Garnet CC By
Here’s an interesting fact: I don’t own a smartphone. It’s shocking, I know. In addition to the fact that I was surrounded by chocolate paraphernalia every day in my city, my brain did not already know the poo-emoji. So, the image didn’t bother me. It wasn’t until the eyes were added that I noticed.
Mike Wege, Senior Vice President and Chief Growth and Marketing Officer at The Hershey Company said that is “an expression of [their] progress to a modern and innovative company.”
There’s probably no better way to describe our modern world then to compare a 107 year-old candy with a pile of steaming poo with eyes that we send our friends via cyberspace.