A whole gaggle of once-popular emoji seem to be falling out of favor among texters and others, according to a new report from creative subscription service Superside. So now you can see if your faves made the list of the world’s most unpopular emoji.
“When conducting our study, it was shocking to see some once-popular emoji among the most endangered globally,” a Superside spokesperson told Cult of Mac. “As new emoji continue to emerge, it will be quite interesting to see if these rankings might change as the years go on and trends change.”
And what happens to deeply unpopular emoji, anyway? In a word, nothing.
World’s most unpopular emoji: The ones most in danger of going ‘extinct’
Once wildly popular emoji are now in danger of going “extinct” — or, more likely, just never used and gradually forgotten — as emoji use varies considerably by generation and new emojis grow in popularity as older ones fade, according to analysis by Superside.
Superside implies extinction in its report, but the use of the word appears to mean little more than “unpopular” and/or “unused” — which Superside confirmed when Cult of Mac inquired. “Extinct” cant’ be taken literally here because the Unicode Consortium considers approved emoji permanent per its global encoding standard for characters and symbols. So emoji won’t be going extinct until we do. (Hat tip to Cult of Mac‘s D. Griffin Jones for the clarification: “They will never remove an emoji,” he emphasized.)
Analyzing the world’s most unpopular emoji
Superside said it pulled the 100 most popular emoji from 2013 to present day and analyzed which have fallen in popularity by rank. That’s how it determined which emojis have the highest probability of “going extinct.”
Using KeywordTool.io, Superside analyzed which emoji were searched for the least in every country in the world and popular cities across the United States to learn which ones are falling in favor by region.
And according to some sources, younger generations don’t find emoji cool at all anymore, so this list of unpopular little icons might get a lot longer in the near future.
Top 3 stinkers
“We found out that the 👌 ‘okay hand’ emoji takes the No. 1 spot for most unpopular emoji globally, dropping 66 places in its ranking since 2013,” Superside said. “The 😳 ‘flushed face’ and 🙌 ‘person raising both hands in celebration’ emojis take the second and third spots.”
“These once-popular emojis are losing their shine as users favor other emojis — likely due to the launch of newer, more relatable emojis and certain ones being used as symbols within hate groups,” it added.
14 least popular emoji
Photo: Superside
Least popular emoji in the United States
Photo: Superside
In addition to singling out the world’s most unpopular emoji, Superside also pointed at emoji it appears to have designed that could gain popularity, like “Dad bod” and “Gamer.” Of course you can download them as stickers.
David Snow, an expert on Apple hardware and software, writes on a variety of technological and cultural topics for Cult of Mac. They include Apple news, technology buying guides, and features about computer setups and Apple TV shows and movies.
With 30 years of experience covering technology and other subjects, he has written and edited for numerous print and online publications, including CMP Media, TechTV.com, CNET, Wired News, Red Herring magazine, Law.com, The National Law Journal and Law Technology News magazine. Among other roles, he served as executive editor of the Law.com network of websites and editorial director, technology, for ALM Media.
Snow graduated with a B.A. from Syracuse University with majors in magazine journalism and psychology. While there, he worked as a reporter for The Daily Orange newspaper and associate editor of Equal Time magazine.
Founder of the blog At the Waterline, he can be reached on X (formerly Twitter) via @atthewaterline and on Mastodon via @dsnow.
