As we all know, emojis are well on their way to taking over the world. The teeny little cartoons may be small, but their popularity is growing so much so that the crying laughing face even made Oxford Dictionary’s 2015 ‘Word of the Year,’ despite being, errr... a picture.
Stats show that on sites like Twitter, we actually use emojis more than we do hyphens or the number 5. Clearly using emojis as shorthand for our emotions, thoughts and feelings is second nature to we social media lovers, but are we really sure what we’re saying?
Researchersanalysed 70,000 tweets in 13 different languages to determine the sentiment and neutrality levels of 751 of the most frequently used emojis, and the findings proved more surprising than you’d probably first imagine.
As expected, most of the popular emojis ranked pretty highly in the positivity scales, but did you know how pessimistic the bento box was? Us neither.
‘Researchers were able to determine which emojis were considered most negative, including the crying cat, the face with the straight line mouth, the police officer and the bento box.’
So according to science, here are five of the most negative emojis going:
1. Fish Cake With A Swirl Design
Nope, neither did we – but what a way to deliver bad news.
2. Battery
With a sentiment scoring of -0.486 turns out people hate getting the battery emoji.
3. The Police Officer
Fight the power, etc.
4. The Bento Box
Who knew?
5. Crying Cat
Because if you want to convey a hangover, a shit journey to work or the fact that you left your umbrella at home and it’s pissing it down, you turn to the crying cat, right?
So there you go, next time you want to throw some serious shade, whack a lunchbox of Japanese rice, veg and meat at the end of your text.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.