Most Discussed New Emojis of iOS 12.1

Smileys, hair types and human appendages are among the most discussed emoji additions in iOS 12.1.

Most engaging were the new hairless people (👩‍🦲 Woman: Bald / 👨‍🦲 Man: Bald),  🥴 Woozy Face, and 🥰 Smiling Face With 3 Hearts.

The new 🦶 Foot emoji saw a disproportionate number of retweets compared to other high-engagement emojis, while the 🥰 Smiling Face With 3 Hearts saw almost no commentary, but a lot a likes and retweets which made it the third highest in this list.

Of the six new smileys in iOS 12.1, only 🥶 Cold Face and 🥳 Partying Face didn't make the top 10. It appears that the variety of interpretations (and potentially suggestive uses) of 🥴 Woozy Face, 🥺 Pleading Face and 🥵 Hot Face led these to draw higher engagement than those with more literal and narrow use cases.

Measuring new emojis by engagement (likes, comments and retweets) on Twitter isn't necessarily an indication of how popular any emoji will be in real-world use, but it does give an insight into which emojis people consider interesting, notable or controversial in some way.

Notably, a number of the top emojis have been associated with existing slang phrases or memes (👩‍🦲 = “wig snatched”, 🧾 = “show me the receipts”, 🥴 = “nutted but she keep sucking”, 🥺 = “spare coochie?”) which goes a long way to explaining the oversized popularity of the bald emoji over, for example, red hair.

Yes, Stan Twitter Is Already Using The Bald Emoji To Say “Wig Snatched” https://t.co/HLXl2HjlXl pic.twitter.com/hm3lWcmqjD

— MTV News (@MTVNews) November 1, 2018

Commentary on the seventh-ranked 🦵 Leg primarily seemed to focus on the “weird” nature of this addition, as opposed to a particular expression of interest in using it as an emoji.

Rounding out the top 1/3 of the list were almost exclusively food items and animals. 🥭 Mango made it in the top 10, two spots ahead of the commonly-requested 🧁 Cupcake.

When @BakerMachado thinks no one wants a mango emoji

cc known mango enthusiast @anildash pic.twitter.com/JnoUnBJrsv

— Jeremy Burge 🐥🧿 (@jeremyburge) July 18, 2018

🦙 Llama was the most popular animal, and 🦟 Mosquito the least popular.

At the less-discussed end of scale are household items such as 🧺 Basket (displayed on iOS as a laundry basket) and 🧹 Broom, as well as objects such as a 🧯 Fire Extinguisher and 🧰 Toolbox. 🧷 Safety Pin may have seen more popularity if release in 2016 when it was used as a display of solidarity with marginalized groups.

I'm a little surprised to see 🧮 Abacus — possibly the least relevant emoji of the new set — is not at the very end of the list.

All responses are charted below, with 70 entries in total. Gender and skin tone variations for human emojis have been merged into a single entry per emoji group.

The List

All statistics in this article have been gathered from this Twitter thread, with numbers tallied from October 30 2018 to November 7 2018.

The date range used means that an emoji such as the 🥯 Bagel—which had a lot of scrutiny in during the prior weeks—doesn't necessarily show as high as it might have done had the same thread been posted during the iOS 12.1 beta period.

It's also worth noting that while other platforms did roll these emojis out earlier than Apple, iOS is the only platform with a universally fast uptake of new emoji support, and thus it's rare to see widespread use of new emojis until they are released on iOS.

Further Reading

• Emoji 11.0 List
• iOS 12.1 Emoji Changelog
• Apple Emoji List

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