a. It really doesn’t matter, I can wait.
b. That’s not cool, I’m leaving.
There’s a bunch of WeChat users complain about this smiling face emoji, say it doesn’t look quite friendly. Generally, young people are more tend to dislike this emoji, using it when expressing negative sentiments like satire, helplessness, speechlessness, while the middle-aged users and the elders feel good about it, see it as a normal smile emoji.
Apparently it causes miscommunication between users from different age groups.
Why this smiling face seems so FAKE and makes people feel uncomfortable? Most people agree that the crux of the matter is the eyes.
People always narrow their eyes when having a REAL smile, like these smiling or laughing emojis in WeChat:
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Wow...!!! Kind of frightening, isn't it?
This little yellow face has his eyes widely open, while dropping down his pupils, normally we call it a “blank stare”. This kind of look is usually read as negative emotions.
See following emojis:
Not feeling quite cozy right?
Then how about these, do they feel better?
So much better with his sunglasses covering those vacant eyes. What’s more, an investigation found surprisingly that people interpret emoji renderings quite differently even though these emojis all have same grinning face and smiling eyes. GroupLens from University of Minnesota released a report in April this year. To conduct survey, they chose 5 platform renderings (Apples, Google, Microsoft, Samsung, LG) of 22 of the most popular anthropomorphic (i.e., human-looking) emojis.
Apple emoji got even a negative score！
Here’s an interpretation that people generally have for this Apple emoji:
The interpretations towards the same emoji are varied from people to people, it could be determined by cultural background, age group and many other factors.
Here are some more emojis from WeChat, and their "Official" Meanings and "Real" meanings:
In the end, let's go back to this emoji.
Though many of the young people in China use this emoji as a negative rendering, there is still quite a bunch of people use it when try to convey their kindness, so don't be upset when people send you this. But next time you have a conversation with people on WeChat, try to comprehend the emojis he or she send in the context of full text message, it may help to avoid a good deal of the potential for miscommunication.
Have fun with emojis!
