If you’ve ever scrolled through your emoji keyboard wondering what on earth some of the silly little figures mean, you’re not the only one.
WordTips analyzed global search data to unearth which emojis internet users find most confusing, and it turns out the upside down smiley face is leaving Canadians perplexed.
According to the study, Canadians look up the meaning of the upside smile face emoji 900 times a month on average making it the country’s most confusing emoji and fourth most confusing in the world.
“🙃 (upside-down face) is pretty baffling when taken at ‘face’ value and your mind may be blown when you consider it as a balding man with no mouth looking down at his shoes,” WordTips explained.
“Emojipedia tells us that 🙃 is commonly used “to convey irony, sarcasm, joking, or a sense of goofiness or silliness,” the study concluded.
There are just 3,782 official emojis in total but that doesn’t stop people from disagreeing about their connotations.
The survey found that 🥺 (pleading face) is the most searched emoji meaning in 51 countries, including the U.S., making it the world’s most confusing emoji.
The 😏 (smirking face) is the U.K.’s most confusing emoji and 💖 (sparkling heart) is the most confusing emoji in Argentina.
Furthermore, different softwares use different details which also creates misunderstandings among emoji users.
“With Apple’s pleading face looking watery-eyed, Facebook’s blushing, and WhatsApp and Samsung bubbly eyes that appear to be hallucinating. Emojipedia describes🥺as a ‘yellow face with furrowed eyebrows, a small frown, and large, ‘puppy dog’ eyes, as if begging or pleading,’ but this cuteness may also mean adoration or feeling touched by a loving gesture,” the study says.
The majority of the most confusing emojis were faces, and according to the study, there’s a good reason for it.
Research referenced in WordTip’s study, by social cognition Professor Rachael E. Jack, Ph.D found that people’s mental representations are shaped by past experiences in turn helping us know what to expect when we are interpreting facial expressions.
Jack’s study also revealed that different cultures receive expressions differently. “East Asians and Western Caucasians differ in terms of the features they think constitute an angry face or a happy face,” Jack told WordTips.
