🫠 Melting Face
what it means
A face sliding into a puddle. It covers social mortification, burnout and literal heat, and became a favourite almost immediately for how precisely it captures giving up.
Dissolving from embarrassment, overwhelm or heat.
the origin story
Added to Unicode in 2021 and adopted rapidly as the definitive burnout emoji.
It was one of the most talked-about new emoji of its year, widely described as perfectly suited to the mood of the time. It sits alongside 🙃 as an expression of quiet collapse, but with more visual comedy.
in the wild
I called my manager "mum" on the call 🫠
There's no recovering from that.
Four deadlines, one day 🫠
Good luck.
how to use it
- Expressing embarrassment or overwhelm
- Burnout humour
- Reacting to heat
- Professionally
- Where the emoji doesn't render on older devices
- About genuine distress that needs words
related terms
receipts
Community feedback
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