Social media has been flooded with people mourning the death of the peach butt emoji

APPLE has released new emoji characters but a simple change to one has prompted outrage with social media trying to #SaveThePeach.

Social media has been flooded with people mourning the death of the peach butt emoji.

APPLE has released its latest mobile operating system and it comes with a slew of new emoji characters to further expand our cherished ability to express ourselves with colourful little pictures.

The iOS 10.2 developer beta for iPhone and iPads released this week contains 72 new emoji additions including a drooling face, a clown face, an avocado, and string of new animals and sporting characters.

But it's a subtle change to an existing emoji that has received the biggest reaction — and it’s far from peachy.

Well actually it’s very peachy, in the sense that Apple has changed the peach emoji to look more like a peach. However the decision has drawn the ire of the more uncouth, double entendre-loving Apple fans of the world who use the emoji for an unintended meaning: a butt.

Every now and then an emoji reaches such great heights that it transcends its intended purpose and becomes widely adopted to mean something else.

The much used eggplant emoji is another example of the triumph of innuendo in the emoji language. And let’s be honest, the peach totally looked like a ripe and firm bum.

Of course the transition to a more conservative-looking fruit did not go unnoticed on the melting pot of hysteria and discontent known as social media.

Some labelled it “just devastating” while others tried to push the hashtag #SaveThePeach.

A noble cause, no doubt, but for now it’s RIP peach butt.

Apple is redrawing most of the food emoji in 10.2...the peach has lost all of it meaning though. pic.twitter.com/bVSmzd7SCj

— Nacho Carretero M. (@carreteronacho) October 31, 2016

omg no. they are killing the butt shaped peach emoji

how are we going to text about booties

— Genevievil @ MTL (@gankstrr) November 1, 2016

Now I can only use the peach emoji if I'm actually hungry😞 RIP 🍑

— Mike Visalli (@mikeslife06) November 1, 2016

K the emoji peach changing to resemble an actual peach is just devastating

— Ian Zelaya (@IanDavidZelaya) November 1, 2016

How can they change the peach emoji!? Apple is about to get kicked to the curb with all these emoji changes. #savethepeach

— Drew (@redrewmusic) November 1, 2016

RIP to all the boys who can no longer comment " 🍑👀🔥" on a girl's instagram pic. Poor Peach emoji.

— Caitlin Knight ♏️ (@caitlin_thfc) November 1, 2016

Soon there's going to be some very perplexed apple engineers, looking at the emoji frequency data and googling "peach consumption decline"

— Kelsey D. Atherton (@AthertonKD) November 1, 2016