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Daily Mail
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
The smiley emoji can cause awkward moments, as it means different things to different generations
From a simple thumbs up to a laughing cowboy, there is an emoji for almost any conceivable moment. But it is the humble smiley face which is the most iconic of them all. However, if you've been sending smiley faces on your group chats, you might have been giving people the wrong idea. For millennials and the older generations, a smiley face is just a way of expressing happiness, but it can have a very different meaning for Gen Z. Instead of being a genuine smile, Gen Z takes this grinning face to convey sarcasm or irony. That means sending smiley face emoji to your younger colleagues in work emails might be making you seem passive-aggressive rather than friendly. According to Erica Dhawan, author of Digital Body Language: How to Build Trust and Connection, No Matter the Distance, people over 30 tend to use emoji according to their 'dictionary'. But for younger 'digital natives' who grew up with technology, each emoji can have a whole host of different meanings. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Gen Z and Millennials revealed how differently they employed the smiley face. Hafeezat Bishi, a 21-year-old intern, told the publication that she felt her older workers were being cold with her when using the emoji. Ms Bishi said that she typically viewed the smile as 'dismissive' and conveying a 'side-eye smile' instead of genuine enthusiasm. She added: 'I had to remember they are older, because I use it sarcastically.' Sara Anderson, a 31-year-old cheerleading coach, said that she regularly included the emoji in messages to add 'lightness' in messages to her team. Ms Dhawan says this is because older generations tend to read emojis as representing the objects they literally portray. That means a smiley face is a happy smile, a snowflake means that it is snowing, and an aubergine is referring to a type of vegetable. But for those who grew up messaging over social media, emoji often have other meanings that have built up over time. Another emoji that can come across as sarcastic is the 'sparkle' emoji. Older users often use these cute sparkles to express positive emotions such as gratitude or excitement. However, for Gen Z, it is more likely to mean that a statement has a sarcastic tone, just like members of older internet messaging boards used to add '/s' after a statement. The same is true of the 'thumbs up' emoji, which is used to express positive affirmation by older users but is often seen as sarcastic by Gen Z. Linguists studying emoji use have also pointed out that the symbols' new meanings can often emerge from slang that older users might not be aware of. For example, older social media users might see the 'skull' emoji as a literal symbol of death or as a sign that someone is figuratively dead - as in 'dead tired' after exercise. But for younger users, the skull is used to say 'I'm dead', which means that they found something hilarious and have 'died laughing'. So, if you get a series of skull emoji in response to a joke, it may actually mean that someone found it extremely funny. Likewise, the fire emoji doesn't represent a literal fire or heat but is rather used to say that something is 'fire', meaning very good or cool, or that someone is 'hot', as in extremely attractive. So, if you want to comment on the warm weather under someone's holiday snaps, you should probably think twice before using the fire emoji. In some cases, the hidden meaning of emoji can also be much darker. In 2023, Surrey Police issued a guide for parents on the latest emoji slang for the drug trade. If you see your child using a horse emoji, for example, that could be a reference to Ketamine, a drug used in veterinary medicine to anaesthetize horses. An alien, demon mask, space invader, or skull and crossbones emoji, meanwhile, could be a reference to MDMA. According to Surrey Police, cocaine is typically referred to using emoji that represent various nicknames for the drug, such as a snowflake or snowman to refer to 'snow' or blowfish to mean 'blow'.
News.com.au
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- News.com.au
Gen Z co-opted the smiley face emoji, but beware — it means something totally different to them
What used to be the universal symbol of warmth and joy has taken a sinister turn – at least in the eyes of Gen Z. The classic smiley face emoji now means something completely different to those under 30, The New York Post reports. Instead of conveying happiness, the grinning yellow face is now seen as dismissive, passive-aggressive, or straight-up sarcastic. And if you're sending it to younger colleagues or friends, it could be rubbing them the wrong way. Hafeezat Bishi, a 21-year-old intern, recently told The Wall Street Journal that she was taken aback when her older co-workers used the smiley emoji in emails and texts. 'I had to remember they are older, because I was use it sarcastically,' Ms Bishi said, explaining that she often views the emoji as conveying a 'side-eye smile' rather than genuine enthusiasm. Meanwhile Sara Anderson, a 31-year-old cheerleading coach, told the publication that she regularly includes the emoji to add 'lightness' to her messages. That's exactly the disconnect: what seems friendly to older folks can come off as phony or even biting to the younger crowd. According to Erica Dhawan, author of Digital Body Language: How to Build Trust and Connection, No Matter the Distance, older generations tend to take emojis at face value, while younger 'digital natives' assign entirely different meanings. 'People over 30 tend to use emojis according to their dictionary,' Ms Dhawan told The Journal, emphasising that for Gen Z, emoji meanings have evolved into a whole new lexicon. But the generational gap isn't just about smiley faces. Back in March, Amit Kalley, founder of support site For Working Parents, warned that emojis have become a covert language for teenagers to communicate everything from drug slang to hate speech. 'It's far from an exhaustive list, but it's based on common emojis used to say something very different to what you'd think,' Ms Kalley wrote on Instagram, pointing to a 'periodic table of emojis' that decodes the supposedly hidden messages. A recent study from Oklahoma State University, meanwhile, found that emoji use can reveal a lot more about your personality than you might think. Researchers surveyed 285 undergraduates, mostly 20-year-olds, to see how their emoji habits aligned with personality traits. 'Emoji use may be related to strategies to manipulate the perceptions of others and to present a positive impression of oneself,' the study said, suggesting that what you send could say more about you than you realise. So, the next time you slap a smiley face emoji on a message to Gen Z, think twice – it might not come off as cheery as you'd hoped.
Yahoo
01-04-2025
- Yahoo
City of Frankfort works on plans to make mile-long stretch of Versailles Road safer
FRANKFORT, Ky. (FOX 56) — A portion of Versailles Road in Frankfort is about to get a lot safer, not just for drivers but for pedestrians as well. The city is improving a mile-long stretch of the five-lane road that roughly 28,000 Kentuckians travel on every day. With numerous homes and businesses along the way, this portion of Versailles Road, which runs from U.S. 460 to Brighton Park Boulevard, is always busy. But despite four intersections with stoplights and crosswalks, many people opt to just run across these five lanes to get from one side to the other. As you would expect, this creates extremely dangerous conditions. Over two years, from 2021 to 2023, the city found there were 190 crashes on the road. Over the last 10 years, there were also 10 crashes involving pedestrians. Half of those pedestrian crashes were the result of someone trying to cross the street, and one of them was deadly. Have you seen this woman? Georgetown PD wants to know McKee man accused of 5th DUI after leading deputies on drunken high-speed chase in Laurel County City of Frankfort works on plans to make mile-long stretch of Versailles Road safer City officials said visibility is also a major concern along this stretch, with streetlights being limited and a steep hill near Lyons Drive preventing drivers and pedestrians from seeing what could be coming. All of these factors are contributing to the city expediting the process to make changes and hopefully prevent more people from getting hurt. 'We want to make sure whatever solutions are implemented, that there may be an educational outreach component of this, making sure that people understand how this affects their safety,' said Frankfort Public Works Director Sara Anderson. 'We just recently had some public input, opportunity and open house in the corridor for folks to kind of see those options and sound off on them,' detailed Frankfort Planning & Community Development Director Eric Cockley. 'So now we start narrowing that down and make sure that whatever we would like to seek funding for, they are on board with.' Read more of the latest Kentucky news A total of $125,000 from the city of Frankfort and the federal government will go into making the changes on Versailles Road happen. Here are the options the city is currently looking into: The first option will see three small-scale changes at the Lyons Drive signal, which could have a big impact on pedestrian safety by Adding a leading pedestrian interval so the walk sign starts before the light turns green for cars Adding more yield to pedestrian signs Make the striping of the crosswalk easier to see. Option two would add a pedestrian island in the center turn lane near Walnut Drive, which is by Wendy's on Versailles Road. This would allow pedestrians to safely wait in the middle of the road before crossing the final few lanes of the road. Read more of the latest Lexington & central Kentucky news There would also be rapid rectangular flashing beacons added, which would alert drivers when someone is crossing the road. The final option would extend the existing median near the American Legion Post and Greenhill Avenue. This would serve as an informal pedestrian refuge while also reducing conflict points for drivers. With how much traffic this stretch of road sees, picking the right option is all the more important. 'You have a massive section of straightaway which does nothing but encourage people to drive fast, which is only going to make things more difficult for pedestrians regardless of where they're trying to cross,' Cockley said. 'So that's been one of our discussions, is, you know, while keeping the road efficient, talking about the timing of the signals and things like that, so that folks can really, like, platoon from a single signal and get out.' You can add your input about the options for the road, as well as learn more, here. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
