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James Holloway’s 2016 New Atlas listicle picked five emoji for their wonderfully narrow, occasionally baffling uses: customs, a derelict house, the U.S. Outlying Islands flag, a funeral urn and Moyai. “Nearly-useless” is the joke, not a measured verdict: the article offers no usage data or test of how often people use them.
What the title refers to
“Five nearly-useless emoji and where you can stick ’em” is the exact title of James Holloway’s article, published by New Atlas on July 20, 2016. Its five choices are a comic list, not a Unicode ranking or a claim that the symbols have no practical value.
The five emoji, and the joke behind each one
| Emoji | Unicode name or identification | Holloway’s comic use |
|---|---|---|
| 🛃 | Customs | An emergency sign for customs. |
| 🏚 | Derelict house | A shortcut when naming that specific kind of building—answering, in effect, “Remind me: what sort of house building are we meeting at, again?” |
| 🇺🇲 | Flag for U.S. Outlying Islands | The article draws attention to the flag’s relationship to the United States flag. That is the article’s 2016 framing, not a current explanation of territorial status or flag usage. |
| ⚱ | Funeral urn | A pointed reply to a question about what to do with remains. |
| 🗿 | Moai; “moyai” is also a listed keyword | A symbol identified by the article with the Moyai Statue near Shibuya Station in Tokyo, which it says was inspired by Easter Island statues. |
What Unicode’s names do—and don’t—tell you
The Unicode Consortium’s Full Emoji List, v18.0, consulted October 8, 2026, names customs, derelict house, funeral urn and moai; it also lists “moyai” as a keyword for moai. Those names and keywords help identify the symbols. They do not establish how often people use them, or whether they are useful.
Why “nearly-useless” is a punchline
The list works by setting an unusually specific symbol beside an imagined everyday conversation. A derelict-house emoji might save a few characters; an urn emoji could make a message strikingly direct. Whether either is useful depends on what someone wants to say. Holloway’s piece supplies no usage counts, survey or other test that would turn its comic judgement into a factual ranking.
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