Seasons of Crime

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Seasons of Crime
Seasons of Crime
Why a Pizza Emoji Fuels Misinformation About Cartel Wars

Why a Pizza Emoji Fuels Misinformation About Cartel Wars

The obsession with reducing cartel factions to individual emojis has led to a messy and inaccurate online discourse about who might be winning or losing.

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Chris Dalby
Jul 11, 2025
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Seasons of Crime
Seasons of Crime
Why a Pizza Emoji Fuels Misinformation About Cartel Wars
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El Chapo’s wife has a pizza slice tattooed on her hand. His sons’ sicarios leave pizza slices on the bodies. Pizza emojis are included in thousands of social media posts about cartel violence.

Why? And how has this severely warped public understanding of how Mexico’s cartel wars are going?

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