🙃 Upside-Down Face
what it means
A smile that means the opposite. It's the standard way to end a message about something going badly while pretending you're fine.
Forced cheerfulness masking frustration, resignation or dread.
the origin story
Added to Unicode in 2015; its ironic-suffering meaning emerged almost immediately through Twitter use.
It became the emoji of choice for burnout humour and passive resignation, and one of the clearest cases of an emoji's meaning being decided entirely by users rather than its official name. Its official description says nothing about sarcasm.
in the wild
Third all-nighter this week 🙃
Please sleep.
They've rescheduled it again 🙃
Of course they have.
how to use it
- Signalling that you're not actually fine
- Burnout and frustration humour
- Casual messaging
- Professionally, where the passive-aggression reads clearly
- When you genuinely are fine
- Where the sarcasm might be missed
related terms
receipts
Community feedback
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