Grinning face with smiling eyes: friendly or threatening?

[Doctor Q]

The Washington Post reports that the "grinning face with smiling eyes" emoji symbol has a very different look across platforms. While Google, Samsung, and Microsoft interpret it as a happy face with teeth, Apple and Twitter gave it a less friendly, which you might interpret as bared teeth or a grimace.

I have a feeling that confusion over this little face will likely lead to World War III, as world leaders misinterpret their short messages to each other. Or will peace prevail despite the problem?

How it looks in your web browser:

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[MacsRgr8]

Hmm... I always thought it was meant as a funny emoji.
Not of hard laughter, but following a simple joke... almost apologising for the simplicity of the made joke...

 

[MacDawg]

I always use it as a grin myself... a non-threatening grin

 

[Doctor Q]

Hmm... I always thought it was meant as a funny emoji.
Not of hard laughter, but following a simple joke... almost apologising for the simplicity of the made joke...

27% of the people in their survey had a similar positive interpretation, while 70% found it to be negative.

 

[MacDawg]

27% of the people in their survey had a similar positive interpretation, while 70% found it to be negative.

They must be surveying the folks that always demand political correctness, take offense at everything and see racism, sexism and discrimination everywhere and in everything

Average folk apparently rarely get surveyed

 

[MacsRgr8]

27% of the people in their survey had a similar positive interpretation, while 70% found it to be negative.

Interesting!
Indeed.... like you said, this could end up to WW3. Humans usually end up being at war with other humans they don't fully understand.

Kim Jong-un's Samsung to Obama's iPhone:

"We have nucleair missiles which can reach your front lawn @ the White House. "​

Joke or threat?

 

[Doctor Q]

Average folk apparently rarely get surveyed

I find your sentence to be offensive, racist, sexist, and discriminatory! :grin with smile:

They said they did an online survey, so they probably don't know anything about the people who took the survey. All we know is that they have Internet access and aren't blind.

 

[MacDawg]

I find your sentence to be offensive, racist, sexist, and discriminatory! :grin with smile:

They said they did an online survey, so they probably don't know anything about the people who took the survey. All we know is that they have Internet access and aren't blind.

Ah, people living in their parent's basement... 'splains a lot
Either that or Kansas City Royals fans stuffing the ballot to throw off the results

 

[Jessica Lares]

This is what it says in the paper:

http://grouplens.org/site-content/uploads/Emoji_Interpretation.pdf

We recruited our survey participants via Amazon Mechanical Turk. We required participants to be located in the United States in order to minimize interpretation differences that may arise from geographic and cultural influence, although this is an interesting direction of future work. In pilot testing our survey, we estimated that it would take roughly 30 to 35 seconds to complete each emoji survey page. Prorating from a minimum wage of $8 per hour, this equated to about $0.07 per emoji page. With 17 emoji pages per survey (random sample of 15 plus the heart emoji page shown twice), we compensated participants $1.20 for completing the survey.

Of the 304 participants, 134 were male, 169 female, and 1 other. The average age was 38.6 (SD = 12; min = 19; max = 74). With regard to smartphone platform, 35% of the participants use Apple, 8% use Google/Android, 29% Samsung, 10% LG, 1% Microsoft, and the remaining 17% use others. Participants also reported their emoji usage on a scale from “Never” to “Always”: 3% said they never use emoji, 16% rarely, 45% sometimes, 27% most of the time, and 9% indicated “always”.

Of course the results are what they are. I always get asked by my parents what the majority of emojis mean.

 

[maflynn]

It looks to be grinning to me but I definitely can see why its interpreted the other way. There's not much of a smile going on , just showing the teeth. I think the "^" for the eyes push it to the smile category for me. If it was just round eyes, I'd probably think its a grimace.

 

[997440]

I'm sort of listening to you and I might even grunt a response, but really, I have to go real bad.

 

[Tech198]

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Neat emoji.

 

[mw360]

It's easier to discuss with a comparison image... The Apple guy looks pretty peeved. The collection here looks like the day 1970-gate broke...

 

[noisycats]

All those other platform emojis are better if the 'grimace' is meant to be a positive symbol. The lack of upturned corners on the mouth makes me think the Apple version is a forced or fake smile. The Apple emoji will likely kill you in your sleep.

 

[MacsRgr8]

IMHO, the Apple emoji looks friendly because of the eyes. That Microsoft Emoji is bad-mojo

I bet that's the deal with this...
What seems more important to you:
- the grin or the eyes?

 

[Tech198]

hehe @ bald head... (that gives me something to shoot for)