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Comment by EMM_386 | Hacker News Reader

> such as U+1F574 ("Man in business suit levitating")

It looks like this character made it into Unicode due to the fact that it was part of the Webdings typeface. Given how widespread that was, many of its characters made their way into Unicode.

https://codepoints.net/U+1F574

Now what it's original intent was, I'm not sure.

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> This character was originally introduced into the Webdings font as an “exclamation mark in the style of the rude boy logo found on records by The Specials". This levitating man was known as Walt Jabsco.

- https://emojipedia.org/person-in-suit-levitating/

TIL: there's a Wiki for emoji trivia. I love it! Thank you to whoever bothers with collecting such information.

Emojipedia is not just an encyclopedia, it is a major contributor to the Unicode emoji process (its editor, Jeremy Burge, is the vice-chair of the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee).

Wow, I didn't realize that. Thanks! The way the website looks, I wouldn't have guessed it's a serious player.

And Walt Jabsco was based on a young Peter Tosh!

http://www.thespecials2.com/history2.php

>was originally introduced into the Webdings font as an “exclamation mark in the style of the rude boy logo found on records by The Specials"

Of course. What could be more useful or obvious?

> According to Jen Sorenson ... the Man in Business Suit Levitating glyph in the Webdings font was intended to be an exclamation mark in the style of the rude boy logo found on records by The Specials published under the 2 Tone Records label. So perhaps the Unicode character would have been better named Rude Boy Exclamation Mark.

See this article for an explanation: https://www.newsweek.com/2016/05/06/secret-ska-history-man-b...

Didn't know the G-Man (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-Man_(Half-Life)) had his own emoji.

I always thought this was “hopping man at a ska show.”

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