3 ms·

> To find out the most confusing emojis in 2024, we at Preply took the top ten most confusing emojis from 2023 and surveyed respondents again about their meanin

> To find out the most confusing emojis in 2024, we at Preply took the top ten most confusing emojis from 2023 and surveyed respondents again about their meaning. We then used standard deviation to analyze answer choices to figure out which ones puzzle Americans the most. … how do you stddev on multiple choice…? But take the rank 2 emoji, "gust of wind"; I would say the top 3 choices are all pretty valid … depending on the context. The thing about emoji is that they're highly contextual. If I see "eggplant" on a grocery list, it might be just an eggplant. In other contexts … well. Similar with "persevering face"; I've probably used it for every option listed, depending on context. There's not always a 1:1 match between emoji & the exact thing you're trying to express. Words have that problem, too. They list three emoji under "the most confusing new emoji" … they only surveyed those three. (The text is explicit about it, but the headline is clickbait.)

vlovich123 2y ago
> … how do you stddev on multiple choice…? By comparing the frequency of the least frequently chosen explanation to the most frequently? It is a bit weird without a more detailed actual explanation of methodology
mardef 2y ago
> The thing about emoji is that they're highly contextual. Same with the flying money emoji. It's on the list as confusing, but it lists "gaining money, losing money, and transferring money" as 85% of meanings. Context clears up which one of those it is It clearly means "money is flying" but it leaves the direction of flight to context.
- dheera 2y ago
  They're also sometimes culturally contextual. In China and quite possibly a lot of east Asia a smile emoji (https://emojipedia.org/slightly-smiling-face https://emojipedia.org/slightly-smiling-face) very often means unhappiness-but-wish-to-avoid-a-confrontation and very often shows up in business contexts to pressure someone to do something. It is almost never used for genuine happiness. It also surprises me that there is no good emoji for hugging. WeChat had to create a non-standard emoji for it and it is highly used. Especially when western culture far more normalizes platonic hugging, I would have expected 20 different hug emoji but they don't exist.
  - deathanatos 2y ago
    > It also surprises me that there is no good emoji for hugging. … U+1FAC2 "People Hugging"? > Especially when western culture far more normalizes platonic hugging … I see U+1FAC2 used this way quite often in a forum I frequent…
candiddevmike 2y ago
Wonder why we can't have real "anatomical" emojis and have to resort to using eggplant like kids passing encoded messages?
- brk 2y ago
  Because while there are emoji conventions for user-specified colors, there are none for sizes.
- f33d5173 2y ago
  I don't think most people would want to use anatomical emoji in the first place. though there's always 8=D
- Freak_NL 2y ago
  A well-written and well-sourced proposal might sway the Unicode Consortium. The 'powered on'/'powered off' characters come to mind as a successful recent attempt which did exactly that. Existing use of such 'text' (outside of Unicode) would make that bid a lot more likely to succeed though.
- lastofthemojito 2y ago
  There's already dicks in Unicode: https://www.revk.uk/2018/10/unicode-dicks.html https://www.revk.uk/2018/10/unicode-dicks.html

vlovich123 2y ago

> … how do you stddev on multiple choice…? By comparing the frequency of the least frequently chosen explanation to the most frequently? It is a bit weird without a more detailed actual explanation of methodology

mardef 2y ago

> The thing about emoji is that they're highly contextual. Same with the flying money emoji. It's on the list as confusing, but it lists "gaining money, losing money, and transferring money" as 85% of meanings. Context clears up which one of those it is It clearly means "money is flying" but it leaves the direction of flight to context.

dheera 2y ago
They're also sometimes culturally contextual. In China and quite possibly a lot of east Asia a smile emoji (https://emojipedia.org/slightly-smiling-face https://emojipedia.org/slightly-smiling-face) very often means unhappiness-but-wish-to-avoid-a-confrontation and very often shows up in business contexts to pressure someone to do something. It is almost never used for genuine happiness. It also surprises me that there is no good emoji for hugging. WeChat had to create a non-standard emoji for it and it is highly used. Especially when western culture far more normalizes platonic hugging, I would have expected 20 different hug emoji but they don't exist.
- deathanatos 2y ago
  > It also surprises me that there is no good emoji for hugging. … U+1FAC2 "People Hugging"? > Especially when western culture far more normalizes platonic hugging … I see U+1FAC2 used this way quite often in a forum I frequent…

candiddevmike 2y ago

Wonder why we can't have real "anatomical" emojis and have to resort to using eggplant like kids passing encoded messages?

brk 2y ago
Because while there are emoji conventions for user-specified colors, there are none for sizes.
f33d5173 2y ago
I don't think most people would want to use anatomical emoji in the first place. though there's always 8=D
Freak_NL 2y ago
A well-written and well-sourced proposal might sway the Unicode Consortium. The 'powered on'/'powered off' characters come to mind as a successful recent attempt which did exactly that. Existing use of such 'text' (outside of Unicode) would make that bid a lot more likely to succeed though.
lastofthemojito 2y ago
There's already dicks in Unicode: https://www.revk.uk/2018/10/unicode-dicks.html https://www.revk.uk/2018/10/unicode-dicks.html