An emoji takeover is sweeping YouTube. After content creator John Casterline urged his 7.2 million subscribers to start using the aerial tramway emoji 🚡, allegedly the “least-used emoji in the world,” comment sections across the platform have been flooded with the little yellow icon.
The campaign, which Casterline described as an effort to “make history,” quickly went viral, leaving many out of the loop and those in the know proudly declaring allegiance to “tram gang.”
How the tramway emoji took over YouTube overnight
Casterline captioned his original video “LET’S MAKE HISTORY.” In it, he explained his bold plan to viewers. “This is the least-used emoji in the world,” he claimed, as he showed the emoji—a suspended aerial tram which can appear either red or yellow depending on the site—on screen, alongside its irl counterpart. “We’re gonna change that, and I need your help.”
“And if someone doesn’t know why you’re doing it, don’t tell them,” he clarified to over 6.1M viewers.
Commenters were immediately onboard with the campaign. @BubblesVR said “TRAM GANG FOREVER! 🚡🚡🚡🚡🚡”, to 1K likes, while @TheCoolStyle commented, “THIS WAS ABSOLUTE CINEMA 🚡🚡🚡🚡🚡🚡🚡🚡🚡🚡.”
Inside the “Tram Gang” emoji movement
The internet caught on quickly, and within 24 hours, John returned to YouTube to thank his audience for popularizing the movement.
“A ton of creators have reached out to me telling me that their comments sections are full of these emojis,” he said. The creator posted a further update on May 18, 2025, where he speculated that bots were now using the tram in their comments, after picking it up from human users during training. He also screenshotted a Russian TikTok, which he asked someone to translate in the comments.
“The russian tiktok says, Americans now have a replacement for the laughing emoji which is the aerial tramway” one user explained.
“Our leader, we won’t falter 🚡🚡🚡🚡🚡🚡🚡🚡🚡🚡🚡🚡🚡” someone else added in praise of the tram— a comment which amassed an incredible 22K likes.
Why is the aerial tramway the least-used emoji?
Not everyone was in on the joke, though, with one poster consulting the r/OutofTheLoop subreddit to ask about the trend. “What’s going on with 🚡 emoji on a lot of yt shorts?” they queried, linking to another, unrelated Short by a tech creator that was littered with aerial tram emojis in the comments.
The internet has always been fascinated with rarely-used emojis
While some users forwarded OP to John’s video, some also speculated on why the emoji was unpopular in the first place, with user Dagur suggesting this was because there were only “8 suspended rails like this in the world.” Others provided deeper context on the origins of the movement, which, as it turns out, dates back to as early as 2018.
“Before Twitter API changes, there was a website and Twitter account that would track realtime emoji usage across Twitter and tracked how often they would be used.🚡was the least used for quite some time and it became a bit of a meme,” u/TropicalBacon explained.
They went on to add that, “Over time, it fell out of the ranking and 🔣 became the least used.”
TropicalBacon also forwarded a link to the website in question, Emojitracker. Although the site is now offline, its last update shows the crying laughing face was in the lead with 3,838,853,523 uses across Twitter. However, the aerial tramway, which had 484,029 uses, was far from the bottom. (Actually at the bottom? The emoji TropicalBacon mentioned, aka “Input symbol for symbols.”)
Reporting on the trend for The Verge in 2018, Shoshana Wodinsky speculated that the tramway emoji was elevated to popularity because it could be easily anthropomorphized, unlike some of the other unpopular emojis. She also spoke to Emojitracker creator Matthew Rothenberg, who agreed that the little yellow tram was “pretty darn cute.”
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