Alien Emoji

A grey or green face with a large bald head and oversized black almond-shaped eyes. No nose to speak of. A tiny mouth, or none at all. This is the grey alien, the single most recognizable image of extraterrestrial life in human culture. And it was designed by Hollywood, not by science.

The grey alien archetype didn't exist before the 1960s. The 1961 Betty and Barney Hill abduction claim popularized the large-eyed, grey-skinned humanoid. Steven Spielberg's *Close Encounters of the Third Kind* (1977) cemented it in the public imagination. Then Whitley Strieber's 1987 book *Communion*), with its haunting grey alien cover painting by Ted Seth Jacobs, became a New York Times bestseller and burned the image into pop culture permanently. After Communion, abductees started reporting grey aliens with increasing frequency, creating what researchers call a feedback loop: people saw what media taught them aliens looked like.

👽 is the endpoint of that feedback loop. An emoji based on a book cover based on an abduction story based on a movie based on earlier abduction stories. It's culture all the way down.

👽 covers a surprisingly wide range. UFO and alien discourse is the obvious one: "UAP hearings got me like 👽" or "Area 51 energy 👽." But the alien also represents feeling alien. "First day at the new school 👽" means "I don't fit in here." "Me at every social event 👽" means "I'm the weird one and I know it."

In rave and psychedelic culture, 👽 represents altered states of consciousness. Psytrance raves are saturated with alien imagery, and 👽 is the go-to emoji for festival content, trip reports, and anything that feels transcendent. The DEA has documented 👽 as a code for LSD in drug emoji slang, though that meaning shifts constantly.

The "ayy lmao" meme (originating around 2012-2013) made 👽 one of the internet's most recognizable reaction images. The meme paired a grey alien photo with the phrase "ayy lmao" and became a Tumblr and Reddit staple. It faded from peak virality but permanently embedded 👽 as a shorthand for absurd, inexplicable humor.

On dating apps, 👽 signals an offbeat personality. One Quora answer explains: someone using 👽 on Tinder is saying "I'm weird, I know it, and I'm not apologizing for it." It's a filter. If 👽 in a bio turns you off, you weren't the target audience.

The grey alien that 👽 depicts didn't appear from nowhere. It was assembled over decades from a surprisingly traceable chain of cultural moments.

The first key event was the Roswell incident (1947), where a crashed balloon (or something else, depending on who you ask) in New Mexico generated rumors of recovered alien bodies. Witnesses described bald, child-sized beings with oversized heads and slanted eyes. These descriptions were vague enough to evolve.

The second key event was the Betty and Barney Hill abduction (1961), the first widely publicized alien abduction claim. The Hills described humanoid beings with greyish skin and large eyes. When the story hit newspapers in 1965, it became the template that subsequent abduction accounts followed.

Then Hollywood took over. Spielberg's *Close Encounters of the Third Kind* (1977) cemented the large-headed, almond-eyed alien in cinema. A PBS documentary notes that before the 1960s, "wraparound eyes" rarely appeared in abduction reports. After The Outer Limits and Close Encounters, they became standard. Media shaped the sightings, not the other way around.

The final piece was Whitley Strieber's *Communion* (1987)), a supposed non-fiction account of alien encounters. The cover painting by Ted Seth Jacobs, showing a grey alien staring directly at the viewer, became one of the most reproduced images of the 1980s. The book hit the New York Times bestseller list and New Line Cinema made a film adaptation starring Christopher Walken (1989). After Communion, the grey alien was locked in: big head, big eyes, grey skin, no mouth. That's what 👽 depicts.

Approved in Unicode 6.0 (2010) as U+1F47DU+1F47D EXTRATERRESTRIAL ALIEN. Added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015. The codepoint U+1F47DU+1F47D places it in the "fantasy" face subcategory alongside 👻, 👹, 👺, and 👾. The design consistently depicts the grey alien archetype across all platforms, though Apple, Google, and Samsung differ on skin tone (grey vs green) and expression (neutral vs slight smile).

1. 1947Roswell incident generates first descriptions of alien bodies
2. 1961Betty and Barney Hill abduction popularizes the grey alien archetype
3. 1977Close Encounters of the Third Kind cements the design in cinema↗
4. 1987Communion's cover painting locks in the grey alien image permanently↗
5. 2010Approved in Unicode 6.0 as U+1F47D EXTRATERRESTRIAL ALIEN↗
6. 2013"Ayy lmao" meme makes 👽 an internet icon↗
7. 2019Storm Area 51 meme: 2M+ RSVPs, 👽 usage spikes globally
8. 2023UAP congressional hearings bring alien discourse to mainstream again

In the United States, 👽 carries the full weight of UFO culture: Roswell, Area 51, congressional UAP hearings, Coast to Coast AM, the "I want to believe" poster from The X-Files. It's semi-serious. Americans have a genuine cultural relationship with the possibility of extraterrestrial life, and 👽 taps into both the believers and the skeptics.

In Latin America, alien and UFO culture is also strong, with its own rich tradition of sightings and folklore (the Chupacabra, the Varginha incident in Brazil). 👽 resonates culturally.

In Japan and East Asia, 👽 reads more as sci-fi and gaming than UFO folklore. The grey alien archetype is less culturally embedded. Alien imagery in anime and manga tends toward more creative designs than the standardized grey.

In rave and festival culture globally, 👽 transcends national context. It's a universal symbol for altered consciousness, transcendence, and the feeling of being transported somewhere else. Psytrance events from Goa to Berlin to São Paulo use identical alien imagery.

• •Before the 1960s, "wraparound eyes" rarely appeared in alien abduction reports. After The Outer Limits and Close Encounters, they became standard. Media taught people what aliens looked like before they "saw" them.
• •The "ayy lmao" meme originated from a grey alien photo circulating on Portuguese paranormal sites in late 2012. By September 2013, it had its own Tumblr blog and had become one of the platform's most iconic memes.
• •The Storm Area 51 Facebook event (2019) attracted 2 million "going" RSVPs. About 150 people actually showed up. One man Naruto-ran behind a news reporter on live TV, creating one of the year's most viral clips.
• •The DEA has documented 👽 as a code for LSD in drug emoji slang. The association likely comes from psychedelic culture's use of alien imagery to represent altered states of consciousness.
• •Whitley Strieber's Communion (1987) cover was painted by Ted Seth Jacobs, a classically trained realist painter. The grey alien face he created became arguably the most reproduced extraterrestrial image of the 20th century. A realist painter defined what the unreal looks like.

• •Using 👽 to call someone weird in a hurtful way. "You're such an alien" can genuinely sting. The self-deprecating use ("I'm the alien here") is fine. Applying it to someone else crosses into insult territory.
• •Missing the drug culture association. The DEA documents 👽 as a code for LSD. Most people using 👽 aren't referencing drugs, but in contexts involving younger users, parents, or workplace monitoring, the association exists and can cause misunderstandings.
• •Sending 👽 to someone genuinely into UFO culture thinking it's a joke. For some people, UAP disclosure and extraterrestrial life are serious topics. Reacting to their enthusiasm with a mocking 👽 reads as dismissive.

• •Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) — Spielberg's film didn't invent the grey alien, but it made the design universal. Before this movie, aliens in media came in all shapes. After it, the big-headed, big-eyed grey became the default. 👽 is a direct descendant of Spielberg's aliens.
• •Communion (1987) — Whitley Strieber's book with Ted Seth Jacobs' cover painting) of a grey alien staring at the viewer became the single most recognizable alien image of the 1980s. It was a New York Times bestseller, spawned a Christopher Walken film (1989), and locked in the grey alien design that 👽 now depicts.
• •The X-Files (1993-2002, 2016-2018) — Mulder's "I Want to Believe" poster is the spiritual predecessor of every 👽 in a bio. The show made UFO culture mainstream and turned the grey alien from fringe belief to water-cooler conversation.
• •"Ayy lmao" meme (2012-2013) — A grey alien photo paired with "ayy lmao" became one of Tumblr's most iconic memes. It made 👽 synonymous with absurd humor and permanently associated the emoji with inexplicable internet comedy.
• •Storm Area 51 (2019) — A joke Facebook event to raid Area 51 drew 2M+ RSVPs, generated global media coverage, and produced the iconic Naruto runner clip. 👽 was everywhere that summer. The event proved that alien culture is one of the internet's most reliable engagement engines.

• •👽 is U+1F47DU+1F47D EXTRATERRESTRIAL ALIEN. Single codepoint, no variation selectors or skin tone modifiers.
• •Common shortcodes: :alien::alien: (Slack, Discord, GitHub). Universally supported across all major platforms.
• •The emoji renders as grey-skinned on most platforms (Apple, Google) but can appear slightly green on some (Samsung older versions). If color matters for your UX, test across platforms.
• •👽 is one of the few emojis with a documented secondary meaning in drug emoji codes (LSD). If building content moderation systems, include it in your heuristics alongside context analysis, not as a standalone flag.

See the full Emoji Developer Tools guide for regex patterns, encoding helpers, and more.