You can tell a lot about someone from their emoji usage. One person’s skull-face can mean the same as another’s upside-down smiley face. Emoji-interpretation depends on the person. Only a true friend knows that when you put the really smiley face, you mean to say you’re angry but keeping it together, or that just responding with a thumb up means you’re really pissed off. They speak to our soul, with zero effort. The millennial dream.
Apple have just announced the emojis we use to express ourselves most and number one is, by far, the crying-laughing face. An emotion in its own right, it’s more than just a smiley face, easier than a ‘haha’. Its popularity is unsurprising – it’s the easiest way to respond to a video your friend sent but you just can’t be bothered to watch. So often used is it that, back in 2015, the Oxford English Dictionary honoured the emoji as the first visual ‘word of the year.’
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Runners up include the red heart, the heart-eyes face, and the kiss-blower. Emoji users are a happy bunch. It helps that you’re probably more likely to describe your happiest moments through emojis rather than illustrate your deepest, darkest despair with a sad face.
Rounding out the top ten were the skull and the sighing, eye-rolling, and confused faces.
To see how accurate Apple’s results were, The Debrief team revealed their most-used emojis.
Jazmin: Crying-laughing face, purple love heart, shrugging girl
Katie: Crying-laughing face, sassy girl, the OK hand
Lucy: Side-eye face, ‘coercive side-kiss face’, flying money
Phoebe: Crying-laughing face, heart-eyes, monkey covering its eyes
Proving Apple right, the crying-laughing face is a clear winner. Perhaps it proves that we’re all positive, fun people. Maybe it just means we’re lazy and can’t be bothered to reply in words to our friends’ stories so this is our new stamp of approval.
With the recent release of iOS 11.1, there are over 70 new emojis in the world. Including a mermaid, dinosaur and, um, broccoli, there’s no saying which – if any – will challenge the current top 10. My money’s on the broccoli.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.