If you asked someone to name the most mid emoji, they’d probably mention the cry-laughing emoji (or the “face with tears of joy”, as it’s officially called). Long the reserve of ageing home counties millennials on dating apps, the cry-laughing emoji has become so synonymous with basic tastes that it’s now almost done a full circle and is often used in irony. Much of its reputation simply comes down to consistent overuse. In Emojipedia data analysing over 99 million tweets between January 1 and March 16, 2023, the little lolling face came out top, closely followed by the “loudly crying emoji” (the one with the two tear streams). It was the same last year, and the year before. And, yes, the year before that.
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But amid all of this, there’s been a different kind of trend, one more defined by what you’re not than what you are. Niche emojis are everywhere. The weirder the better. Once you notice them, they’re hard to ignore: a random tooth in a person’s bio, a worm in the caption of a picture, a triangular ruler by someone’s name. Mostly, these emojis are showing up on Instagram or sometimes X, but you might clock them on WhatsApp too. Often paired with a blurry selfie, or a carousel of something unrelated, the niche emoji is best used with zero or very little context. Some favourite recent ones I’ve seen on Instagram captions: a row of eggs, a house fly, one of those red fire hydrants. And instead of typing hearts or flame emojis (the real mid emoji) in someone’s comment section, a person might send the two people hugging emoji, or, inexplicably, some ice cubes. Look how creative I am, these emojis appear to say. Look how unique and unexpected.
Not to be confused with the way that boomers and Gen X use emojis (often extremely literally, say with a dog next to a message about their dog, or a detective emoji when they’ve worked something out), the niche emoji feels like the equivalent of wearing one item of clothing that nobody else owns, or art school kids getting increasingly weird haircuts. Dr Philip Seargeant, author of The Emoji Revolution, often compares emoji use to verbal slang, in the sense that it can indicate to others that you’re part of an in-group of outsiders. You’re not like them. “In the same way that slang evolves, [emoji use] is very ephemeral,” he says. “It’s distinct from what the majority are using, and it indicates that group’s identity and a difference from the mainstream. It has an in-group meaning, and that happens between generations and different demographics.”
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The niche emoji seems to lend the user an air of mystery or nonchalance, which is a very 2023 to present yourself online. In the same way that we’re seeing more Instagram accounts with minimal photos (any more than 100 and you look unhinged), no bio and very few image captions (the 2016 era of extensive, emotionally charged captions are long gone), the niche emoji is a way of signifying that you're cute, cool and random and just don't care. Biz Sherbert, culture editor at The Digital Fairy, a creative consultancy that specialises in Gen Z trends, agrees with this. “I think using emojis as a caption implies a certain nonchalance or confidence about posting. It's one step down from no caption at all – you're not using the caption to justify the post.”
Sherbert also thinks the rise of niche emoji use follows a wider trend of people leaning into hyper-specific identity markers and subcultures online. “There’s an increased pressure to conspicuously show those markers in all parts of life, especially online,” she says. “For example, the combination of ballet shoes, a spider web and an oyster is meant to signal that the poster has coquettish tendencies.” There's also the fact that, well, they just look nice. “On a more conceptual level, I think people are heavily identifying with characters, often animated, right now. We see this in the incredibly popular genre of memes that depict characters like Hello Kitty and Moomin alongside ‘relatable’ text,” adds Sherbert.
Hyper-niche things will always be cool, in the same way that super specific memes just seem to hit better, or items of clothing hang right when not everyone is wearing them at the same time. Remember how last summer everyone got those beige, slip-on Birkenstocks, and then they just seemed to dry up overnight? Emojis are, I think, no different. And while just as in fashion, there are eternal classics (is the cry-laughing emoji the Converse All Star of the emoji world?), there will always be those weirder options to choose from that make everything appear more aesthetically appealing and interesting. Long live the feather emoji. And the ballet shoes. And the mountain.
