Investors tried to throw cash at this startup that was actually just a joke

About a year ago, the world was introduced to Emojli, the ridiculous emoji-only social network and messaging app that refused to take itself seriously, with its creators content to dance along the line somewhere between satire and a real product.

But on July 30th, 2015, Emojli will be shutting down, pulling the plug on the app where everything - including usernames - consisted of only emojis.

In an email to users, Emojli creators Matt Gray and Tom Scott broke the bad news:

Emojli was set up as a joke by two people in their spare time and despite the occasional call from confused investors, it isn't a startup. Over 60,000 of you may have downloaded our apps, but very few people actually use it. To keep Emojli running after August we would have to spend a decent amount of money, and it's just not worth it for the joke.

And it was a joke, despite a launch video promising that Emojli was a real thing despite its origins as a joke of an idea, which you can watch below.

"Emojli came out of two stories: comedy social network Yo, and the Unicode consortium's new emojis," Gray and Scott told Business Insider. "The two of us had the idea at about the same time - we weren't sold on it until we realised that usernames should be emoji too. At that point, we burst out laughing and realized we had to build it."

Emojli's founders have hinted that there were plenty of would-be investors who tried to treat Emojli like it was a real company, either attempting to give them cash or get them to work on it full time.

"We'd reply saying we're not a startup, and already have great careers which we have no intention of abandoning," said Gray and Scott. "The conversation usually faltered there!"

Because Emojli's creators are based in London, it's subject to the United Kingdom's data protection laws. That means that literally everything from Emojli will be gone forever, unless users take steps to back up their own messages - you know, just in case you sent some critically important emojis.