Emojis are one-character pictures used to convey a wide range of emotions, people, things, and locations. The word comes from Japanese e ("picture") + moji ("character"), and its resemblance to the English word "emotion" is a total coincidence.
Emojis started becoming popular in Japan in 1999 as a simpler way to send emoticons over smartphones. Apple started supporting emojis in 2008 initially for Japanese users only, and in 2011 for the rest of the world. Android and Windows followed suit two years later. Emojis quickly became the trendiest way to send pictures as text over the internet.
The Unicode Consortium is responsible for approving new emojis, and different platforms decide how they will render each one (see right). Every year Unicode approves a hundred or so new emojis. In 2015, Unicode added the option to change the skin tone of people emojis, and the group has pushed for adding emojis more representative of all the people who use them. For example, in 2019 Unicode announced the addition of emojis which represent different disabilities.
Compare to ASCII Art, Emoticon, and Henohenomoheji.
Emojis have the following tropes:
- 555: Used in many versions of the pager emoji (๐).
- All Deserts Have Cacti: ๐๏ธ
- Ambiguous Gender: The default for most of the people-in-roles emojis.
- Animesque:
- Since emojis were originally just for Japanese smartphone users, they have an outsized Japanese influence. See: ๐พnote , ๐ปnote , ๐ฃnote , ๐ฅnote , ๐note , ๐ฎnote , ๐ผnote , ๐ฏnote , โฉ๏ธnote , ๐note , ใ๏ธnote
- The facial expressions and gestures borrow a lot from Japanese media. See: ๐ช ๐ ๐ ๐ ๐ ๐ข ๐น ๐บ.
- Art Evolution: Emojis started out as very pixellated graphics on smartphones, but soon transitioned to vector graphics to render better in other media.
- Blue Means Cold: ๐ฅถ
- Blue with Shock: ๐จ
- Bowdlerise: In 2016, Apple changed the gun emoji (๐ซ) into a toy pistol. Most of the other major smartphone providers soon followed suit.
- The Cameo: The paperclip emoji (๐) on Windows 11 is none other than Clippy.
- Card Games: ๐ (Joker card), โฅ๏ธ โฃ๏ธ โฆ๏ธ โ ๏ธ (card suits), ๐ด (Hanafuda card)
- Cartoon Meat: ๐ฅฉ๐๐๐ฅ
- Catching Some Z's: ๐ด ๐ค
- Cat Folk: Several people emojis (๐๐๐๐๐๐ฅ๐ก) have cat cartoon counterparts (๐บ๐ธ๐น๐ป๐ฝ๐ฟ๐พ).
- Cat Ninja: ๐ฑโ๐คnote
- Circling Birdies: ๐ซ
- Cool Shades: ๐
- Cross-Popping Veins: ๐ข
- Crying Critters: ๐ฟ
- Cry Laughing: ๐ ๐คฃ ๐น
- Depending on the Artist: Emojis render differently based on which platform or operating system they're viewed on.
- Distaff Counterpart: To avoid accusations of sexism, most emojis are either gender-neutral or have both male and female counterparts.
- Everything's Better with Sparkles: ๐ (sparkling heart)
- Everything's Sparkly with Jewelry: The Ring emoji on Mozilla Firefox OS 2.5 has sparkles.
- The Face of the Sun: ๐ is a cartoon sun with a smiling face on it.
- Facepalm: ๐คฆ is a person with closed eyes putting a hand on their face.
- "Far Side" Island: ๐๏ธ is a small island with a palm tree on it. The island is barely bigger than the tree itself.
- Fascinating Eyebrow: ๐คจ is a face with one eyebrow raised.
- Five-Token Band: Each person emoji has six colors. The default is yellow (i.e. ๐ง), and after that the skin tones range from light to medium to dark (๐ง๐ป ๐ง๐ผ ๐ง๐ฝ ๐ง๐พ ๐ง๐ฟ).
- Flipping the Bird: ๐
- Flower Motifs: Apple's version of the White Flower emoji (๐ฎ) has the Japanese text "you did very well", since Japanese teachers often use it as a stamp of approval.
- Genie in a Bottle: ๐งnote
- The Greys: ๐ฝnote
- Hand Signals: ๐ ๐คnote ๐
- Heart Symbol: There are quite a few โค๏ธ emojis, here's a list of them.
- High-Pressure Emotion: ๐คnote
- Internal Homage: Apple's Open Book emoji (๐) has text from its "Think Different" advertising campaign.
- Japanese Politeness: ๐ ๐
- Jenny's Number: WhatsApp's version of the pager emoji has the number "867-5309".
- Jolly Roger: ๐ดโโ ๏ธ is a black flag with a skull and crossbones on it.
- Lady in Red: The dancer emoji ๐ is often described as a sexy, confident woman and wears a red dress.
- Lost in Translation:
- Since emojis originated in Japan, some of them have distinctive Japanese meanings which have mostly been lost in western culture. For example, ๐ข means anger (not firecrackers), ๐ is bowing (not a kid trying to act cute), ๐ฎ is a stamp of approval (not just a flower), ๐ means please please or thank you (not praying), and ๐จ means dashing away (not farting).
- Even outside of Japan, some emojis have evolved from their original meanings. ๐ค was originally called "Face With Look of Triumph", but is mostly used for expressing anger. ๐ is called "Person Gesturing OK", though it's also used as Ballerina or Hands On Head. ๐ is originally "Information Desk Person" and it's used as Hair Flip or Sassy Girl.
- A study from the University of Minnesota found that people give wildly different descriptions for the same emoji rendered on different platforms.
- Lotus Position: ๐ง
- Lucky Seven: ๐ฐ is a slot machine with three 7s in a row.
- The Man in the Moon: ๐ ๐
- Monkey Morality Pose: ๐ ๐ ๐
- Mother Nature: ๐ฌ๏ธ
- Music Is Eighth Notes: Musical Note (๐ต) and Musical Notes (๐ถ) are eighth notes.
- Nerd Glasses: ๐ค
- No Mouth: ๐ถ
- Non-Ironic Clown: ๐คก
- Ocular Gushers: ๐ญ
- Oni: ๐น
- Pinocchio Nose: ๐คฅ
- Playboy Bunny: ๐ฏnote
- Pose of Supplication: ๐
- Product Placement: The video game emoji (๐ฎ), which takes the form of a gamepad, is an Xbox Wireless Controller on Microsoft platforms, with Skype's (animated!) version◊ more explicitly showing it to be the first version of the controller that came with the Xbox One.
- Puppy-Dog Eyes: ๐ฅบ
- Retcon: Many emojis that previously had a default gender have been changed to have an Ambiguous Gender; keyboards use a new sequence of characters to produce the old version.
- "The Scream" Parody: ๐ฑ ๐
- Shout-Out:
- ๐ references S.P.O.C.K's Vulcan salute.
- ๐จ๐ผโ๐ค and ๐ฉ๐ผโ๐ค are inspired by David Bowie's Aladdin Sane album cover.
- ๐ด๏ธ was originally a character named Walt Jabsco from The Specials' album covers, who ended up in the Webdings font which is how it came to emoji.
- The number on Facebook's pager emoji is the Facebook Customer Support number (without the area code).
- "Silly Me" Gesture: ๐
- Snot Bubble: ๐ช
- Superhero: ๐ฆธ
- Sweat Drop: ๐ ๐ ๐ฐ ๐ฆ
- Symbol Swearing: ๐คฌ
- Tengu: ๐บ
- Talking Poo: ๐ฉ (though it doesn't actually talk)
- Thinking Tic: ๐ค
- Visual Innuendo: The "eggplant" and "peach" emojis are almost never used without being one of these for a penis or a butt respectively.
- V-Sign: โ
- Waterfall Puke: ๐คฎ
- Wingding Eyes: ๐ ๐ป (love), ๐ต (dead), ๐ตโ๐ซ (dizzy), ๐ค (rich), ๐คฉ (star-struck)
- Wipe That Smile Off Your Face: ๐ค
- Your Head A-Splode: ๐คฏ
- Banned in China: Since China doesn't recognize Taiwan, the Taiwanese flag emoji (๐น๐ผ) is blocked there. This has caused some problems with Apple's iOS, causing some phones to crash when it's displayed.
- Follow the Leader: Apple started rendering the Pistol emoji (๐ซ) as a toy gun in 2016, and soon the other major platforms followed suit.
- No Export for You: Flag emojis are unavailable on Windows platforms, and trying to display or insert country flags there only shows letters from respective countries. (They will still show up on apps and services such as Discord, which have their own design sets embedded.)
- It's Popular, Now It Sucks!: It's not hard to find a person online who refuses to use emojis because of how ubiquitous they are, not helped by all the shoddy merchandise made of them.
- Memetic Molester: ๐๐๐ I'm gonna molest you!
- Memetic Mutation:
- ๐ ฑ is often used as a letter substitute.
- Variations of ๐ are used to represent insanity.
- ๐ค and variations thereof are commonly used to represent confusion or to throw shade on others.
- Using ๐ the ๐ clapping ๐ emoji ๐ for ๐ emphasis!
- ๐๐บ๐ค ๐บ๐๐ข๐ข howdy. i'm the sheriff of tropervillenote
- Some emojis are used to represent Internet memes: ๐พnote , ๐งnote , ๐ธnote , ๐ธโ๏ธnote , ๐ฆnote
- ๐คฃ,๐ญ, ๐ณ, ๐คจ, and ๐ are the most common memetic reactions.
- What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: On Twitter, emojis are often placed in one's handle or profile summary to make a political point or make fun of the other side.
- In the aftermath of the 2016 U.S. election, two factions of left-leaning American politics engaged in the Liberal Twitter Emoji War. The socialist left (๐น) would use ๐ฝ to make fun of the centrist left, which would use ๐ฅ and ๐ฉ to make fun of the socialist left.
- Right-leaning Twitter also has its own emojis. The flag of one's country (e.g. ๐บ๐ธ or ๐ฌ๐ง) often shows pride in one's country. Reports that Twitter was "shadow-banning" conservative accounts prompted some to put โ in their handles. The Frog emoji (๐ธ) is used by the far-right to evoke the Pepe the Frog meme.
- Efforts to make emojis more inclusive get a lot of political heat. Efforts to add a Hijab emoji and make a salad more vegan is viewed by some as Political Overcorrectness, while others view them as long overdue.
Emojis are used in the following works:
- Deadpool (2016) had billboards which called the movie "๐๐ฉL".
- Durex started a campaign to get Unicode to create a Condom emoji.
- This commercial for McDonald's takes place in a world where everyone's head is an emoji which changes with their mood.
- The South Carolina Department of Public Safety put up emoji billboards in 2016 to combat drunk driving.
- The World Wildlife Fund started the #EndangeredEmoji campaign to support 17 emojis depicting endangered species.
- Zits has a couple strips which discuss emojis, most of which discuss Jeremy's texting habits and his parents struggling to use or understand them.
- The Emoji Movie is pretty much Exactly What It Says on the Tin. The film mostly takes place in a smartphone and most of the characters are emojis.
- Emoji Dick is a crowd-sourced translation of Moby-Dick into emojis.
- Dictionaries have started adding emojis as entries. Oxford Dictionaries even named the "Face with Tears of Joy" emoji the Word of the Year in 2015.
- Rowley Jefferson's Awesome Friendly Spooky Stories uses emojis in The Scanner. After everyone turns into skeletons because of the scanner, they use the skeleton emoji, but the emoji has no expression so nobody can tell what emotion they're trying to express.
- Ellen DeGeneres made fun of some of the emojis on her show.
- "Emoji" by Brooklyn Queen has the singer asking the audience to send her various emojis.
- In the music video for Galantis' song "Emoji", the main character gets a package with a heart emoji.
- Big Data has a lyric video appropriately titled "The Business of Emoji".
- Iliza Shlesinger: Played for Laughs in Freezing Hot, in response to a Bad Date who sent her a surreally underwhelming text message afterwards:
"You send me something that stupid, I'm not giving you the dignity of a normal text back. You're not even getting back a regular emoji. No winky face, no sad face. I'm going deep into the emoji bank and I am pulling out... fried shrimp."
- Disney Emoji Blitz is a video game featuring emojis modeled after Disney characters.
- Emoji.io is a Maze Game which has emojis eating other emojis.
- The Tree of Nerfs 2: The AB layer has you collect reactions to your messages from people using ๐ emojis.
- In one strip of Dinosaur Comics, T-Rex and Utahraptor propose new emojis, ranging from the Batman emoji to the "straight-up sex emoji".
- xkcd has made a running gag of Emoji (and by extension, Unicode) ever since their inception, such as having a Magic 8-Ball that gives answers in Emoji, making "new sports" with Emoji, and of course, the idea of the vomit modifier.
- Emojipedia is a reference dedicated to documenting emojis.
- The Rotten Tomatoes critics' concensus for The Emoji Movie is "๐ซ".
- The Wattpad user YarnStore made a story using emojis and punctuation.
- At least a few lines of The Canterbury Tales have been translated into emoji.
- Homestar Runner: The short "Squintmojis" parodies the phenomenon, as it's devoted to combining emojis in ways that makes them look vaguely like characters from the website, like combining the bathtub, siren, and sake bottle emojis to form Homestar, or a saxophone, a human ear, and a pink purse to form "'Moji-pan".
Strong Bad: Are you tired of people using -moji as a legitimate suffix? Neith-moji are we-moji!
- Brizzy Voices made a video suggesting what the emojis sound like.
- DavidParody tried to recreate various emojis and did emoji facepainting with WolfieRaps.
- Disney has its As Told By Emoji" series, which recreates various Disney movies with customized emojis.
- Jacksfilms:
- He spent most of 2017 ironically hyping The Emoji Movie. Before it was released, he changed his Twitter profile picture into his own emoji based on the movie's main character.
- After the movie was released, he gathered with his friends and fiance to guess which movies are depicted by various emojis.
- In a parody video, he joked that the iPhone X is actually a "$1000 emoji machine", citing its new animoji feature.
- The Filipino YouTube kids' channel Keira Charma does the "emoji challenge", where the two kids try to recreate emoji and clip-art expressions.
- Molly Mulshine made the video "Real Life Emoji", which depicts texting with emojis as an actual conversation.