Before we had emojis, there were emoticons – the sideways faces (and sometimes genitals) made of punctuation we used back when texts were only 180 characters long.
And the most standard emoticon was the smiley, i.e. : ) (If you put a hyphen-nose on your smiley you’re a cop.)
It’s a nice, normal smile, right? No subtext? Something you’d use to soften something that sounded a bit direct or blunt, or just because you liked happy faces.
What do you think the emoji equivalent of that smiley is? Is it this guy? ?
Well, you’re wrong, and you’ve probably offended someone.
According to Emojipedia, this is only a “slightly smiling” face, and its smile is “thin”. As well as conveying “a wide range of happy sentiments”, it can also convey passive aggression, or “this is fine”.
?: A yellow face with simple, open eyes and a thin, closed smile which conveys a wide range of positive, happy, and friendly sentiments.
Its tone can also be patronizing, passive-aggressive, or ironic, as if saying ~This is fine~ when it’s really not.https://t.co/ensPTtnfta pic.twitter.com/fmJSckadZ9
— Emojipedia ? (@Emojipedia) April 9, 2019
Oh god oh god oh god.
Is this why that Tinder babe never texted back? Why your boss seemed kind of pissy when you quietly pointed out a typo in a big report? Has your mum been negging you for years without you noticing?
Great, I’m going over dozens of old text conversations in my head now ? https://t.co/AjbaRWYnNq
— Catherine Shu (@CatherineShu) April 9, 2019
For the record, this is what Emojipedia says is a “classic” smiley these days: ☺️
And this gurning maniac, the equivalent of the old-timey :D, is a “grinning face”: ?
Of course, emojis are pretty open to interpretation – everybody knows an eggplant isn’t an eggplant, and nobody knows whether those hands pressed together mean “praying” or “high five”. So it’s possible you haven’t been putting a bit layer of pass-agg on every perfectly normal text you’ve sent in the past five years.
But Emojipedia is the Oxford Dictionary of the other keyboard, so what they say goes. But you know, only if you’re into communicating clearly! ?