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For the first time since 2021, there is a new No. 1 emoji. Two long-time favorites are no longer the most used: 🤣 and ❤️.
The new top emoji? None other than 😭!
Loudly Crying Face took the top spot because it became the default reaction for when something was too funny/embarrassing/cute to cope with; using a laughing emoji is no longer enough. We NEED more drama.
Image from The New York Times
Among teenagers, 💀 briefly outpaced 😭, but it didn’t stay on top.
Image from The New York Times
While politeness reigned supreme for many years, frustrated/angry emojis are now breaking through the top ranks. The middle finger (you know the one!) jumped from No. 113 in 2021 to No. 17 in 2025. Enraged face 😡 is now in the top 15. And, face with angry symbols on the mouth 🤬 is now ranked No. 26, up from No. 120!
Scrolling through the emoji keyboard will expose you to nearly 4,000 different options. Yet, just 10 emojis account for over one third of all global emoji shares:
😭🤣😂❤️🙏😘🥰👍😍😁
Many people loved the Saturday Night Live skit where the aerial tramway 🚡 tried to make a case for not being the least-used emoji. It’s no red heart ❤️, but it’s no longer on the list of least-used emojis: 🗨️(left speech bubble), 🪸 (coral), 🥍(lacrosse), 🏺(amphora), 🛰️(satellite), 📇(card index), 🤾(handball), and 🈁(Japanese ‘here’ button).
Emojis are an incredibly important part of our day-to-day communication. Whether you like them or not, they can communicate feelings that words sometimes lack. In some instances, they are as important — if not more so — than words.
If you haven’t seen the aerial tramway SNL skit, I’m including it below. It is worth the watch!
Source: Emoji use data was provided by Google’s Federated Analytics, capturing anonymized, aggregated usage in Gboard. The collection periods spanned November 2024 to January 2025 and November 2025 to January 2026.
An irreversible binomial is a pair of words that is used in a fixed order in an idiomatic expression. For example, peanut butter and jelly. You never refer to it as a "jelly and peanut butter" sandwich. It has a fixed order. In irreversible binomials, the order of the phrase becomes so fixed that the entire phrase is a part of our vocabulary.
Here are some more examples:
Better or worse
Sink or swim
Now or never
Mix and match
Rock and roll
Walk and talk
Meet and greet
Better or worse
Win or lose
Chips and dip
Dine and dash
Do you use these very often? I say “meet and greet” waaaay too often! And, who doesn’t want chips and dip???
A MUCH-NEEDED LAUGH!
INSPIRATION
Doug Hegdahl had never seen the ocean until he joined the Navy during the Vietnam War. While his ship, U.S.S. Canberra, was located in the Gulf of Tonkin, he fell overboard. Miraculously, he survived for hours treading water in the Gulf, and he was rescued by a North Vietnamese fisherman.
Doug was taken to the infamous POW camp, Hanoi Hilton. He was the youngest and lowest-ranking prisoner. Because his story seemed so far-fetched (who actually falls off a ship??), the guards were convinced he was a CIA operative. They tried to make him create propaganda videos, but Doug leaned into a different strategy — to appear absolutely dumb.
Whenever they tried to teach him the language (for propaganda videos), he stared blankly or pretended not to understand. Eventually, they gave up and referred to him as “The Incredibly Stupid One.”
Because they deemed him harmless, they gave him various jobs that let him be out and about in the facility. He could be heard humming the tune “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.” Little did his captors know, he used that tune to help him memorize the names, capture dates, method of capture, and personal information of other prisoners.
Doug was up for early release, and other senior officers in the prison encouraged him to take it. When he returned to the US, Doug shared the 254 POW names that he had memorized, helping to reclassify 63 service members from MIA to POW.
“I had probably the most embarrassing capture in the entire Vietnam War,” Doug said in a 1997 interview. “I found that my defense posture was just to play dumb. Let’s face it, when you fall off your boat, you have a lot to work with.” (Quote from Marc Leepson’s book: The Unlikely War Hero: A Vietnam War POW’s Story of Courage and Resilience in the Hanoi Hilton.)
After returning to the US, Doug worked as an instructor in the Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) school in San Diego, California. He appreciated his privacy and kept a low profile; he eventually retired in 2001.
✨ ✨ ✨
Doug’s story fascinated me. He used his intelligence to outsmart his captors by appearing to have low intelligence. What a strange concept in today's world, where everyone wants to tell you all about their expertise. It's also a good reminder that people aren’t always what they seem!
Doug Hegdahl
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I'm a professional communicator who loves stories, effective communication tactics, and cats. Subscribe to my newsletter for grammar tips, communications advice, and things to make you laugh/cry!
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