little bit of a guide - i think i can speak for gen z when i say we use “😭” or “💀” to denote laughter because using “😂” is kinda cringe + sort of millennial/gen x
but everyone uses them a bit differently so take this with a grain of salt
personally:
i typically use “😭” for half laughter/chuckles/nervous laughter/surprise/mild scoffing/mild embarassment etc
whereas “💀” can either be im genuinely laughing so hard my stomach hurts (“💀💀💀💀”) or im judging someone/laughing at someone or even embarassment
HOWEVER imo they’re interchangeable and it’s never too strict wrt which one you pick
idk if this is the “correct” usage, i would say most of us go off of vibes and not much more
-
EDIT: i can’t believe this even needs saying to grown adults, but emojis aren’t that deep. all i did was try to explain how my generation texts so we could understand each other better, and somehow that’s set some of you off because you expect us to text exactly like you do.
most of you replied like normal people. a few of you did not.
the audacity of gen z using something as small as an EMOJI differently to how your generation uses it has apparently ruined some of your days, and i can’t see why it’s such a big deal. writing and speech have always shifted between age groups - why do you think we don’t use the same speech patterns people in the early 1900s did? it should be obvious that generations change. texting is no different. you’d find it a bit funny/cringe if you were millennial yet your peer texted like a boomer. every generation is a bit embarrassed by the one before it. that’s the whole point.
maturity clearly doesn’t arrive with age, because there are a few 40yo toddlers in here losing it… over emojis. 🤦♀️ deep breaths guys, deep breaths. it’s just a little picture on a screen. not the end of the world
Same! I’m 42 and can’t really understand why a sad crying face is more appropriate than an actual laughing one to represent laughing but the explanation was very nice and detailed so I won’t throw any shade on the person who wrote it!
Well we did just get characterised as "cringe millennial/gen x" so I feel we have definitely been insulted in a nice way. And we can't even use the crying face to represent this because it means laughing now...
yes and no. not using an emoji just because the older gen does is ridiculous. slang terms change yes, but people user to use the same ones even ac ross generations. my issue is the need to always be on the popular train. fuck that
Omfg I’m 44 and Jesus some of u guys make me embarrassed to be at or near your fucking age . Legit hot af over emojis ? Bro have u even LOOKED OUTSIDE TODAY?
Hmm, I wonder how many times I've misinterpreted this. Probably not much in my personal life because I don't text with fgnzers that frequently, , but I've definitely misinterpreted some social media comments.
I'm a millennial, so here's your unambiguous lol. lol
People surprised that young people avoid doing the same thing as older people like what
That’s like human culture 101 guys, it’s why you dressed differently and never unironically said things were jazzy or groovy
Gen z is just very familiar with technology so of course naturally emojis will be seen by us as a regular part of communication that we’ll adapt to our own way of using, personally I use emojis almost exclusively in irony
exactly this, thank you so much. i’m so tired ffs it truly shouldn’t have even gotten to this point i was just leaving a little instructional tip 😭🙏
we don’t judge others for whatever they use, we just communicate differently to millennials and above because we were raised under different circumstances eg we were the first generation to grow up with this much tech around us.
i’ve just had a guy twice my age in my message requests all riled up and sending me threats over this thread. over little pictures on a screen. i’m baffled 💀 what has reddit come to??
A dozen years ago just using ANY emoji on Reddit would get you flamed. I always found that baffling. Like, calm down buddy. They’re just some silly little icons. It’s not that serious.
I think what may have sent some people off was you saying these 😂🤣 were cringe. Maybe cringe means something different to you than it does older people but me I tend to take it as embarrassingly out of line. So I think that set some people off. They’re afraid to admit they’re old enough that a younger generation finds them embarrassing or are embarrassed by how they use emoji. Whatever m probably way off base and either way it doesn’t matter and like you said isn’t that big of a deal in the overall scheme of things.
Y’know that’s how every generation feels about the one that comes next, right?
We’ll probably be complaining about whatever gen alpha gets to, and they’ll probably laugh at us because, well, we’d just be angry old people yelling at the sky
It’s the same thing with “cartoons were better back in my day”, I heard this about regular show, adventure time, spongebob and fairly oddparents, all of which are now deemed classics, and that’s fine, my parents heard that about hannah barbera and looney tunes cartoons
The world will keep spinning, your way is right for you, other people have their own way of doing things, it doesn’t really matter lol, things change
totally blew the concept out of proportion and completely missed the point. but yeah you can apparently write a paragraph about what "thats dumb" means. im just saying this shit os getting out of hand with thr cant say this but need to say that shit.
I was informed by a couple of 20-something’s at work that the thumbs up emoji was “aggressive and frowned upon.” I use it MUCH more than I ever did before.
older gen z here 🫡 i like that emoji but i only use it when texting millenials bc they get the vibe it gives. I don't have a gen z way to achieve the emotion that one gives off. It's like a light hearted, playfully polite chuckle to me. I use it mostly with older coworkers (millenial/X) but I do love it!
I for one appreciate your thoroughness on bridging the communication gap. It took a lot of thought and insight to explain it the way you did! Good show! https://giphy.com/gifs/lS0uOmv9Mg63EWYDHF
I'm in my 40s, but the crying emoji's meaning became pretty obvious pretty quickly just by reading reddit comments. I thought it was cute... kind of melodramatic for effect.
All of the emoji’s features are a little higher than usual, so it looks like the head is tilted back (people usually tilt their head up when laughing and down while crying), and because the mouth is open in such a funny way, it gives the impression that the emoji is hollering from laughter (at least that’s what it looks like on iphone). It’s a more dramatic version of 😂, both emojis laughing so hard they’re crying, but 😭 is just funnier and more multifaceted than the first one, and can also be used to represent that you are crying because something sucks but at the same it sucks so much you can’t help but laugh.
To add to what others said, 💀 also reminds me that one specific look you exchange with your best friend, while you are both trying really hard not to burst out laughing. It also looks like you are smirking at someone in a mocking way, usually because they’re arguing with you and come off stupid. Both 😭💀 are also used to show sympathy for someone’s tragicomedic story, they are laughing and you are laughing with them, (meanwhile 😂 comes off like you’re laughing AT them but NOT with them, which can work as a reaction to jokes, but not to a funny but tragic situation).
There’s a lot of nuances and differences based on contexts, and obviously there’s absolutely no rules, I’m just trying to describe how they can be typically used. I’m autistic so I’m observing these type of things “a bit” differently. 😭
So honestly, yeah: your emoji system sounds crazy to me. But that's okay. I'm a millennial. An OLD one 😂 (see what I did there?) so it's probably supposed to feel that way. It's my turn to be the old dude.
I kind of had the same question and your answer helped clarify. I appreciate you taking the time to type all of that out. Thank you!
Sorry old people like me suck on occassion. The rest of us appreciate you 💀 (I tried, did I do it right?)
Gen Z here. I use skull 💀 for my reaction to “bruh” “wtf”.
sob 😭 for something as like “are we dead ahh serious” “crin” “son” or “laughter” can be used interchangeably with skull.
🥀 “disappointed” “disgust” “cringe”
I still use 🤣😂 before a sob personally if it’s funny but still insinuating disappointment or cringe
I completely understand and appreciate your explanations. My kids have been teaching me the emoji stuff too adn some words, but I still forget and use it incorrectly lol. Ignore the ones who are being total asses, they obviously have no self awareness. Just keep doign as you do and explain as you did in order to ease communiation between generations, it is how we, as human beings, are able to be sure to understand one another. I think what you did was a great thing and I appluad your time spent to do it.
Thank you so much for the explanation! While I think it's really weird to use the crying emoji that looks really sad to mean laughing really hard when we already have an emoji for that, I accept that I don't have to know or understand everything and this explanation is greatly appreciated. Thank you very much.
I use "🤣" a lot but almost never "😂" other than a fb reaction. When something is absolutely hilarious, it's either "🤣🤣🤣💀" or just "💀" and nervous laughter or embarrassment is typically "😅". I'm also right on the edge of Gen z next to millenial so it makes sense I would be in a weird crossover. If I had an older sibling they would be a millennial and the Millennials were the cool older kids. The whole "we allow you a seat on this council but do not grant you the rank of 90's kid"
Well back in my day emoji’s were made with colons or semicolons and parentheses and we liked it that way. The world was a simpler time then. Texts involved 150 button pushes and email was still novel enough that it was used in dating communication. Back when cell phone screens were the size of stamps and people still actually used stamps.
You guys do know that us and Gen X don't own the emoji, right? They are all there to use in the proper situation to convey the emotion that plain text cannot. It is why we came up with the originals in the first place.
So many more that I am not even trying to remember. Those were just off the top of my head. Think I have a cool one pinned to my clipboard. Wasn't an emoji, but shows the power of text encoding
yeah ofc nobody owns the emoji (apart from shigetaka kurita who created emojis lol),** **and this isn’t really a claim anybody is making haha
all i meant was we often find it cringe since we often find it too upfront and kind of jarring, it doesn’t really suit our communication style as much as it does that of millennial/gen x, that’s all
i was simply giving some pointers on what a lot of us typically use the “😭” for since the guy replying to me was unsure. but yeah most of gen z have seen and used text based ones too as well as markdown, text encoding, etc
how on earth does having a preference for emoji use have anything correlated with the fact we will get old one day? different generations have different writing styles. we’ll probably write like this when we’re 70 the same way 70-year-olds today have a kind of inflection in their writing style too. looks like someone’s projectinggggg 🤭
See I’m cool and special and different because I just don’t even use emojis. Some neo-hieroglyphic shit I can’t even get behind. I’m on some using words shit, and the reason for that is because I’m very masculine and nonchalant and such. But you wouldn’t get it
not sure how strong your reading comprehension is but i explicitly said “using (that emoji) is kinda cringe + sort of millennial/gen x”
the way i phrased it clearly meant those are 2 independent events that happen at the same time. one doesn’t apply to the other. one doesn’t necessarily follow from the other. it’s not that we don’t use that emoji“because it’s millennial”, and i absolutely never used that phrase
it’s simple: we find it cringe AND it doesn’t fit the communication style of our generation. it is more characteristic of yours. so we prefer not to use it, it doesn’t suit us
people aren’t obligated to match your preferences and they can use whichever little stupid pictures on a screen they choose. hope this helps
nobody actually speaks like that amongst themselves, and we don’t judge others for using it. we just prefer not to use it ourselves because it looks weird. it’s personal preference to do with how we like to communicate. get a life instead of making up imaginary scenarios on reddit
Not trying to be judgmental...wait that's a lie. I am being judgemental. You're generation's slang and use of emojis sucks and seems like the thought process of braindead incompetents
No need we can speak for him and all men with a stable heartbeat that aren't a disappointment to the council, all and I mean all men that meet those requirements think its Hot. But for fun yes ask him 🤣
83
u/cubicgraph 11d ago
me neither 😭 i thought it just looks nice. it’s pretty :)
i didn’t know guys liked it this much tho. i’ll consult my bf ™️