B Button (blood Type) Emoji

A white capital letter B on a red square. 🅱️ was designed for Blood Type B (important in Japanese dating culture where blood type predicts personality). It became one of the internet's most iconic memes.

The 🅱️ meme has three layers. First, the Bloods street gang in Los Angeles historically replaced the letter C (for rival Crips) with B in words: "Bompton" for Compton, "bool" for cool. Second, internet communities on Reddit and 4chan adopted this practice ironically, replacing random consonants with 🅱️ for absurdist humor. Third, the emoji became central to the deep-fried meme aesthetic: over-saturated, glowing-eyed images with 🅱️ scattered throughout.

The meme peaked in 2017, got banned from r/dankmemes in November of that year, survived by 30 votes in a community poll, and has been in a state of ironic zombie status ever since. Using 🅱️ unironically now signals you're either new to the internet or doing a throwback.

Reddit and meme culture. 🅱️ was a staple of r/dankmemes and r/DeepFriedMemes from 2016-2018. Replacing letters in words ("🅱️eter" for Peter, "🅱️ompton" for Compton) was the core format. The Daily Dot covered it as "the meme tearing the internet apart."

Blood type (East Asia). In Japan and Korea, blood type personality theory is culturally significant. 🅱️ actually means Blood Type B in East Asian contexts, where Type B people are stereotyped as creative, passionate, and unpredictable.

Bloods gang. The emoji has been used to represent the Bloods street gang, replacing C's with B's in text. This usage is the original source of the letter-replacement practice that the meme communities later co-opted.

Modern usage. The meme has faded from peak but lives on in nostalgic deep-fried content and ironic throwbacks. Current use is mostly self-aware.

The 🅱️ meme grew from the intersection of gang culture and internet irony. The Bloods street gang in Los Angeles had a longstanding practice of replacing C's (for rival Crips) with B's in writing. "Cool" became "bool," "Compton" became "Bompton."

Internet communities noticed this practice and began copying it ironically. In October 2016, YouTuber Swolotag posted a video using the 🅱️ emoji as a letter replacement. By early 2017, r/DeepFriedMemes and r/dankmemes had made it their signature format. The emoji appeared in over-saturated, distorted images with text like "🅱️ETER" (Peter) and context-free absurdism.

The meme grew so dominant that on November 6, 2017, r/dankmemes moderators banned it after a poll where 🅱️ survived by only 30 votes out of 20,000. The ban made it even more legendary. It became the meme that was too powerful to live but too iconic to die.

Approved in Unicode 6.0 (2010) as U+1F171U+1F171 NEGATIVE SQUARED LATIN CAPITAL LETTER B. Added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015. Originally designed for blood type communication in East Asian markets. Samsung's early design used a blue background instead of red.

In Japan and Korea, 🅱️ is actually about blood types. Blood type personality theory is culturally significant in East Asia, where Type B people are seen as creative, selfish, and free-spirited. In Japanese dating, sharing your blood type is common, and 🅱️ communicates that identity.

In the West, almost nobody uses 🅱️ for blood types. It's a meme or a gang reference. The same emoji, completely different cultural weight.

• •Samsung's original design for 🅱️ used a blue background instead of red. Every other platform uses red, making Samsung's version stand out as the odd one out.
• •The 🅱️ emoji survived a ban vote on r/dankmemes by only 30 votes out of 20,000 cast in November 2017.
• •In Japan, knowing your blood type is as common as knowing your zodiac sign. Blood Type B people are considered creative but self-centered. 🅱️ is used unironically for this purpose in East Asian social media.

• •The Daily Dot published a feature calling 🅱️ "the meme tearing the internet apart" in 2017, documenting its rise from blood type indicator to the defining symbol of deep-fried meme culture.
• •The "Hey 🅱️eter" meme format, based on Family Guy's Peter Griffin, combined 🅱️ letter replacement with deep-fried image distortion. It became one of the most recognizable formats of the 2017 meme era.

• •🅱️ is U+1F171U+1F171 followed by U+FE0FU+FE0F. Without the variation selector, some platforms render it as a text-style symbol.
• •Common shortcodes: :b::b: (Slack, Discord, GitHub).
• •Part of the blood type emoji set alongside 🅰️ (U+1F170U+1F170), 🆎 (U+1F18EU+1F18E), and 🅾️ (U+1F17EU+1F17E).

See the full Emoji Developer Tools guide for regex patterns, encoding helpers, and more.