i think the eggplant predates unicode emoji support, it’s one of those “imported from proprietary japanese phones” things.
okay i looked it up, the first association was in the 90s with a weird-ass reality tv show. some guy literally nicknamed “eggplant” had to live in a locked apartment until he made 10M yen on sweepstakes winnings, and he didn’t win any clothes for 15 months so the tv team had to live-censor him by moving an eggplant around on the screen. the story is hilarious, if a bit creepy.
There’s a documentary https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-contestant/
It’s super fucked up they kept him locked up for a year. He had to start over from the beginning multiple times, so much so that he stripped naked for the last reveal where he was on stage because he just assumed that he had to win back his clothing again.
That documentary was fucking fascinating. I watched it one night, then made my housemates watch it the next day.
They teased me at multiple points like “Oh, this is why you yelled ‘THAT’S WHERE THE EGGPLANT CAME FROM’, isn’t it?”
He was nicknamed eggplant?? Damn I watched that but didn’t realise that’s where it came from.
Upon seeing the peach emoji, who wouldn’t create an eggplant emoji?
Nah, guy was a dickhead
