Emojis: Do you know what they mean?

Former Member

Hey everyone,

I came across an interesting piece of research looking into how people interpret emoji. They found that because emoji tend to look different on different devices/platforms (like in the picture above), there's a lot of room for mis-communication: you might want to express one emotion, but whoever you're talking to understands something totally different!

Here's an example they give using the 'grin' emoji, and how positively or negatively people interpret it:





Even more interestingly, they also found that a lot of people interpret the same emoji in different ways (especially that Apple grin)

You can read the full summary here.


Have you ever experienced this, where you've used an emoji and someone's taken it to mean something different to what you meant?
Are there other ways to express how we're feeling?

- James

Former Member

It is really incredible at how different one emoji is on different types of devices. I tend to use emoji's but i use GIF's more to express how i am feeling.

Past User

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independent_

Aidan wrote: »

There's this emoji, I always used to think it was someone with their hands praying, and I realised recently it's actually meant to be people high-fiving 😂😂 idk whether that looks different on different platforms lol

Oh wow!!! I never even thought of it like that😂😂

Former Member

Luckily everyone in my circle sees apple emojis which is what 99% of anything aside from the above array of services uses (eg discord) ahaha.

I think it's funny how even aside emojis can be interpreted differently. For example:
: ) and c:
two smiley faces but they "feel" different.

my personal bane of existance is this face:
x3

From what i understand "x3" is a combo of ":3" and "xD" so its like a super happy smile i guess? but i always see "x3" as mega passive aggressive lmao (this specific one is the bane of my existance because an old friend used to use it all the time, and no matter if knew they had good intentions i just could not shake the aggressive vibe it gave me LOL)

I think that over time you sync the meaning of emojis around your frieng group/other groups-
Like for example this one: :chin: (the thinking emoji)
As i'm going off the apple version of this which looks like it's very suspicious, the thinking emoji to me always conveys a sarcastic "HMMMMM" like you're pointing out something obvious, which i got from like two big chat groups who used the thinking emoji like that constantly because i always talked in those groups. It's funny when i talk to people who didn't pick up that meaning and they use it in a different way and i just take 2 secs like "oh yeah its actually used to convey non sarcastic things with these people" haha.

Former Member

Aidan wrote: »

There's this emoji, I always used to think it was someone with their hands praying, and I realised recently it's actually meant to be people high-fiving 😂😂 idk whether that looks different on different platforms lol

I didn't even realise those were hands. I just saw something blue and thought it was beads of water.

Former Member

I just kind of base it on what the message seems to be conveying, or how that person usually uses the emoji. I think that a lot of people use emojis in ways that weren't originally intended, but you get used to how other people use them.

Former Member

Meggles wrote: »

im sorry but the microsoft grin is actually terrifying.

I totally agree with you! In fact, I don't like any of them - except those Yahoo emojis, the old style 'emoticons' and that ROFL one just cracks me up!