Worm Emoji

An earthworm, typically shown as a pink or brown segmented creature. On the surface, 🪱 is simple: worms, fishing bait, gardening, dirt. Below the surface (appropriate for a worm), it's become one of the most internet-brained emojis in Unicode.

The TikTok era gave 🪱 two major cultural moments. First: "Would you still love me if I was a worm?", the relationship loyalty test that went mega-viral in 2020-2022, where people asked their partners the most absurd hypothetical imaginable. Second: the worm on a string (Squirmle) cult following, where a cheap carnival toy became an ironic icon of Gen Z affection.

Beyond memes, 🪱 carries the idiom "opening a can of worms," meaning to start a chain of problems. For gardeners, composters, and environmental science types, worms matter more than you'd think: earthworms are essential to soil health, aerating the ground and producing nutrient-rich castings. The emoji also pulls in a handful of figurative senses: earworm (a song stuck in your head), bookworm) (a voracious reader), brain worm (the 2024 RFK Jr. story that broke Twitter), and sandworm (Dune's Shai-Hulud, a whole meme genre).

Approved in Unicode 13.0 (2020) as U+1FAB1 WORM.

🪱 lives a double life online. In serious contexts, it's gardening, composting, fishing, and nature content. In meme contexts, it's pure chaos energy, a symbol of vulnerability, absurd affection, and Gen Z humor.

The "Would you still love me if I was a worm?" trend made 🪱 a relationship emoji of sorts. People still reference it years later when testing their partner's loyalty in the most ridiculous way possible. The worm on a string community uses 🪱 alongside their beloved fuzzy toy. And as a general reaction emoji, it says "I'm small, weird, and existing" with a kind of self-deprecating charm.

The worm emoji was added in Emoji 13.0 (2020), arriving at the perfect moment. The "Would you still love me if I was a worm?" meme had started circulating on Twitter in June 2019 and hit TikTok in May 2020, meaning the worm emoji debuted right as worm culture was peaking.

Worms have a surprisingly rich cultural history. Charles Darwin spent over 40 years studying earthworms, publishing "The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms" in 1881 as his final scientific book. It sold 3,500 copies in its first month, outpacing the early sales of On the Origin of Species. Darwin concluded that worms "have played a more important part in the history of the world than most persons would at first suppose."

The idiom "opening a can of worms" entered American English around the 1950s, derived from the literal experience of opening a metal bait can and watching live worms escape everywhere. It's the American version of "opening Pandora's box."

1. 1881Darwin publishes his earthworm book, his final scientific work, outselling Origin of Species in its first month.
2. 1978Desmond Bagley's novel Flyaway introduces the English word "earworm" (a calque from German Ohrwurm) for a song stuck in your head.
3. 1990Tremors premieres, inventing the "Graboid" movie worm and seeding the horror-worm genre
4. 2019"Would you still love me if I was a worm?" meme originates on Twitter↗
5. 2020Approved in Unicode 13.0 as U+1FAB1 WORM, debuting right as worm meme culture peaks on TikTok
6. 2021Dune (2021) film ignites the Shai-Hulud sandworm meme on Reddit r/dunememes↗
7. 2024RFK Jr.'s brain worm revelation turns 🪱🧠 into a political shorthand overnight↗

• •The word "earworm" is a direct translation (calque) from the German Ohrwurm. It originally meant earwig in both languages, but in the late 1950s Germans started using Ohrwurm for a song stuck in your head, and English borrowed the sense in the early 1980s. Desmond Bagley's 1978 novel Flyaway was the first documented use in English.
• •Globally, between 406 million and 740 million people are infected with hookworm, primarily in tropical and subtropical regions. It's one of the most common parasitic infections on Earth, and 🪱🩸 shows up regularly in global health content.
• •There are over 6,000 species of earthworms worldwide, ranging from half an inch to the Giant Gippsland earthworm of Australia, which can reach 3 meters (10 feet) long.
• •Earthworms breathe through their skin. They have no lungs. If their skin dries out, they suffocate, which is why they surface after rain and why they're always moist.
• •Red wiggler composting worms (Eisenia fetida) eat 25-35% of their body weight per day, converting food scraps into nutrient-rich castings that are essentially superfood for soil.
• •The "Would you still love me if I was a worm?" video by TikToker ninzzx earned 10.8 million plays and 2.4 million likes, spawning one of the most enduring relationship meme templates.
• •Darwin's 1881 earthworm book sold 3,500 copies in its first month, outpacing On the Origin of Species. He wrote: worms "have played a more important part in the history of the world than most persons would at first suppose."
• •Every earthworm is a hermaphrodite with both male and female reproductive organs, but they still need a partner to reproduce. Two worms line up in opposite directions and exchange sperm.
• •The idiom "opening a can of worms" comes from the 1950s American experience of opening metal bait cans and watching live worms escape everywhere. It first appeared in print around 1951.
• •Earthworms aerate soil by creating tunnels as they burrow, which helps plant roots access water and nutrients. A single acre of healthy soil can contain over 1 million earthworms.

• •Darwin's 1881 earthworm book was his final scientific work and outsold the early printings of On the Origin of Species. He spent 40+ years studying how worms transform soil.
• •The Squirmle (worm on a string), a cheap carnival toy from the 1970s, became an ironic Gen Z icon. It's been adopted as an LGBTQ+ symbol in some online communities.
• •Heidi Klum's 2022 Halloween costume was a full-body worm with prosthetics, a viral reference to the "Would you still love me" meme.
• •Dune's Shai-Hulud sandworms reached full meme status with Dune (2021) and Dune: Part Two (2024). The "I'm Shai-Hulud, your beloved sandworm" tweet format is a fan staple, and 🪱🏜️ shorthand tags Dune content across Reddit and X.
• •Tremors (1990)) gave us the Graboid, a monster worm that hunts by vibration. The film spawned seven sequels and a TV series, making it one of the longest-running creature-feature franchises. The cable network usage of 🪱 spikes every time Tremors plays.
• •RFK Jr.'s 2024 brain worm story created an entire subgenre of political Twitter memes. "Brain worm" is now a stock insult for any take considered cognitively compromised.