Person Facepalming Emoji
U+1F926:facepalm:Skin tonesGender variantsAbout Person Facepalming 🤦
Person Facepalming () is part of the People & Body group in Unicode. Added in Unicode E3.0. Type on GitHub and Slack to use it. On Discord it's . On TikTok, type in comments to insert it. Click copy above to grab it, paste it anywhere.
Works in iMessage, WhatsApp, Discord, Slack, Instagram, Twitter, Gmail, and every app that supports Unicode. Pick a skin tone above to customize it.
Often associated with again, bewilder, disbelief, and 9 more keywords.
Meaning varies across cultures, see cultural notes below.
Scroll down for the full story: meaning, trends, combos, and more.
How it looks
What does it mean?
A person with their hand pressed against their forehead. That's it. That's the whole gesture. You already know exactly what it means because you've done it a hundred times in real life. 🤦 conveys frustration, disbelief, embarrassment, or secondhand cringe at someone's (or your own) lapse in judgment. Emojipedia describes it as expressing "frustration or secondhand embarrassment ('cringe') at the ineptitude of a person or situation." It works as the emoji equivalent of SMH (shaking my head), or as a visual form of the Picard Facepalm meme that dominated internet culture for years. The gesture itself is ancient, appearing in artwork going back centuries, but the word "facepalm" first appeared in a Usenet post on May 15, 1996. The emoji arrived twenty years later as part of Unicode 9.0 in 2016. In China, it means something different entirely: on WeChat, the facepalm emoji was the #1 most used emoji in 2019, but there it expresses amused embarrassment or stifled laughter rather than pure frustration.
You'll find 🤦 everywhere someone does something dumb. Group chats after a friend locks their keys in the car. Quote-tweets of politicians contradicting themselves. Slack reactions when the build breaks for the third time on a Friday. It's self-deprecating too: "Forgot my laptop charger 🤦" or "Just realized the meeting was yesterday 🤦♀️" are ways of admitting your own mistake while making light of it. On Reddit, the r/facepalm subreddit has 8.1 million members who post screenshots of people being oblivious or contradicting themselves, and the emoji is basically the sub's mascot. In workplace communication, 🤦 sits in an interesting middle ground. It's not on the top 10 emojis to avoid at work, but it can read as dismissive if aimed at someone's idea in a meeting or Slack thread. Self-directed facepalms ("can't believe I missed that 🤦") are always safer than facepalming at a colleague's work.
It means frustration, embarrassment, disbelief, or disappointment, either at yourself or someone else. It's the visual equivalent of SMH (shaking my head) or the Picard facepalm meme. You use it when words aren't enough to express how dumb something is.
Roughly, yes. SMH (shaking my head) and 🤦 both express disbelief or frustration at something dumb. You can use them together ("SMH 🤦") or interchangeably. Emojipedia explicitly notes the emoji can be used in a similar context to the SMH acronym.
The reaction emoji search showdown
What it means from...
If your crush sends 🤦 after something you said, they're probably reacting playfully to something corny or embarrassing, not genuinely upset. It's often lighthearted teasing, like responding to a bad pickup line. Context matters though. If it comes after you did something actually dumb (sent a text to the wrong person, told a story that didn't land), they're letting you know. The self-directed version ("I can't believe I just said that 🤦") from a crush is often an invitation to reassure them.
Between partners, 🤦 is usually affectionate exasperation. "You forgot the milk again 🤦" or "I just realized I've been calling your coworker by the wrong name for a year 🤦♀️." It softens a complaint. One thing to watch for: if your partner sends 🤦 without explanation after you say something, it might signal actual frustration rather than playfulness. Tone is harder to read in text, so follow up if it feels cold.
Among friends, 🤦 is pure comedic shorthand. Someone posts an embarrassing story? 🤦. Your friend texts that they accidentally liked their ex's photo from 2019? 🤦🤦🤦. In group chats, it often functions as a reaction rather than a response, like upvoting someone's embarrassment.
Tread carefully here. Self-directed facepalms ("just sent the email to the wrong distribution list 🤦") are always fine and can even be endearing. But facepalming at a coworker's idea or question, even casually, can come across as dismissive or condescending. In Slack, the 🤦 reaction on someone's message should be reserved for genuine shared frustration (like a deploy breaking), not as commentary on their work.
Usually straightforward: he's reacting with frustration or amusement to something dumb, whether his own mistake or something in the conversation. From a crush, it's typically lighthearted teasing. If a guy sends 🤦 after something you said, he's probably ribbing you rather than genuinely upset.
Same meaning as the generic version, but personalized. She's expressing frustration, embarrassment, or disbelief. If directed at herself ("I just did the dumbest thing 🤦♀️"), she might be looking for reassurance. If directed at you, it's usually playful exasperation rather than real anger.
The community grew, the verb faded
Emoji combos
Origin story
The physical gesture of putting your face in your hand is as old as human frustration itself. An 1896 marble sculpture called "Caïn" by Henri Vidal, displayed in the Tuileries Gardens in Paris, shows the biblical Cain with his face buried in his hand after killing his brother Abel. That's about as heavy as a facepalm gets.
The modern internet facepalm traces directly to Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation. The iconic image comes from the season 3 episode "Deja Q" (aired February 5, 1990), where Q appears on the bridge claiming he's been stripped of his powers and calls Picard "the closest thing I have to a friend." Picard's reaction, hand to face in pure exasperation, became one of the earliest and most durable image macros of the internet era. The earliest YouTube reference to Picard's gesture as a "facepalm" was uploaded by Johan Jacobsen on May 21, 2007, and has since passed 489,000 views.
The word itself first appeared in a Usenet post on May 15, 1996: "Christie facepalmed." The Oxford English Dictionary added it in August 2011, and Merriam-Webster followed in February 2017, a year after the emoji landed. That the emoji predated the Merriam-Webster entry by a year says a lot about how fast digital culture moves compared to dictionaries.
Unicode approved it in June 2016 as part of Unicode 9.0, one of 72 new emojis in the batch. Emojipedia founder Jeremy Burge predicted it would be "very popular. There is no doubt." He was right.
Approved in Unicode 9.0 (June 2016) under the official name "Face Palm" with codepoint . Added to Emoji 3.0 in 2016. The emoji was derived from proposal L2/15-054, submitted in 2015 as part of a batch of "popular requests." It arrived alongside 🤷 (Person Shrugging) and 🤞 (Crossed Fingers) in what was one of the most anticipated emoji releases. Previously displayed with a gendered appearance, it's now shown as gender-neutral on most platforms. Gendered variants 🤦♂️ and 🤦♀️ use ZWJ (Zero Width Joiner) sequences, and all versions support five Fitzpatrick skin tone modifiers.
r/facepalm: the gesture that became a community
Quintilian had a section on this
Design history
- 1896Henri Vidal sculpts "Caïn" in the Tuileries Gardens, Paris, one of the earliest artworks depicting the facepalm gesture
- 1990Star Trek: TNG episode "Deja Q" airs (Feb 5), creating the iconic Picard facepalm image↗
- 1996The word "facepalm" first appears in print (May 15 Usenet post)↗
- 2007First YouTube video labeling Picard's gesture as "facepalm" (May 21, by Johan Jacobsen)↗
- 2009Know Your Meme creates facepalm entry (July 27); r/facepalm subreddit founded on Reddit (August 28)↗
- 2011Oxford English Dictionary adds "facepalm" (August)
- 2016Unicode 9.0 / Emoji 3.0 approves 🤦 as U+1F926 "Face Palm" (June); Apple adds it in iOS 10.2 developer beta (October 31)↗
- 2017Merriam-Webster adds "facepalm" to the dictionary (February)↗
Around the world
In China, the facepalm means something completely different. WeChat designed its own facepalm emoji that shows a face laughing with hands over its eyes, reportedly inspired by Hong Kong comedy legend Stephen Chow. A Tencent design team of three to four people spent five months creating it. On WeChat, facepalm expresses amused embarrassment, like tittering or not being able to help laughing at something funny, with a "seek-joy-amidst-hardship" sentiment. It became the #1 most used emoji on WeChat in 2019, with users born after 2000 favoring it most. The emoji was so culturally significant in China that someone named Jin Zhaoping tried to trademark it for clothing products in 2018, which Tencent disputed. A Shanghai lawyer noted the design may have even infringed on Stephen Chow's personality rights. In the West, 🤦 leans negative (frustration, disappointment). In Chinese digital culture, it leans comedic (amused disbelief).
WeChat designed its own version that shows a face laughing with hands over its eyes. It's reportedly based on Hong Kong comedy actor Stephen Chow's expressions. On WeChat, the facepalm conveys amused embarrassment and stifled laughter rather than pure frustration, which is closer to its Western meaning. It was the #1 most used emoji on WeChat in 2019.
The emoji itself doesn't directly reference Star Trek, but the facepalm's internet popularity absolutely does. Captain Picard's frustrated hand-to-face gesture in the 1990 episode "Deja Q" became one of the most iconic image macros online. The Picard facepalm meme spread for nearly a decade before Unicode formalized the gesture as an emoji in 2016.
Gender variants
🤦♀️ woman facepalming is one of the most-used gendered emoji variants, period. It consistently outranks the gender-neutral 🤦 and the 🤦♂️ man version. Part of this is path dependence: before gendered variants existed, most platforms rendered 🤦 as female by default. When the man and woman versions were added, people were already accustomed to the female design.
There's a perception gap between the gendered facepalms. 🤦♀️ reads as exasperated, done with it, "I can't believe I have to explain this." 🤦♂️ reads more as embarrassment or genuine frustration. Same gesture, different emotional register. This isn't just vibes: research on gendered emoji perception shows that the perceived gender of an emoji changes how recipients interpret the emotional intensity and intent of a message.
GitHub caught flak when their default shortcode rendered as 🤦♂️ instead of the gender-neutral 🤦. The incident highlighted how platform defaults shape which version of an emoji becomes canonical, and how much implicit gender coding exists in systems that claim to be neutral.
Popularity ranking
Search interest
Who uses it?
Often confused with
🤦 and 🤷 were released in the same Unicode 9.0 batch and people often pair them, but they express different things. 🤦 is "I can't believe this" (active frustration), while 🤷 is "I don't know / I don't care" (passive indifference). You facepalm at someone's mistake. You shrug at the unknowable.
🤦 and 🤷 were released in the same Unicode 9.0 batch and people often pair them, but they express different things. 🤦 is "I can't believe this" (active frustration), while 🤷 is "I don't know / I don't care" (passive indifference). You facepalm at someone's mistake. You shrug at the unknowable.
😓 (Downcast Face with Sweat) shows dejection and mild anxiety, with a downward gaze. 🤦 is sharper: active frustration or disbelief, not passive sadness. If you're tired and stressed, it's 😓. If someone just asked you to explain the same thing for the fifth time, it's 🤦.
😓 (Downcast Face with Sweat) shows dejection and mild anxiety, with a downward gaze. 🤦 is sharper: active frustration or disbelief, not passive sadness. If you're tired and stressed, it's 😓. If someone just asked you to explain the same thing for the fifth time, it's 🤦.
Both express exasperation, but 🙄 (Face with Rolling Eyes) is more about dismissiveness or annoyance, often with a sarcastic edge. 🤦 is about disbelief or embarrassment. 🙄 says "oh please." 🤦 says "oh no."
Both express exasperation, but 🙄 (Face with Rolling Eyes) is more about dismissiveness or annoyance, often with a sarcastic edge. 🤦 is about disbelief or embarrassment. 🙄 says "oh please." 🤦 says "oh no."
They express different emotions. 🤦 is active frustration or disbelief ("I can't believe this happened"). 🤷 is passive indifference or uncertainty ("I don't know, and maybe I don't care"). They were released in the same Unicode 9.0 batch in 2016 and are often used together: 🤦🤷 ("I'm frustrated, but what can you do?").
The exasperation family on a workplace-vs-warmth map
Do's and don'ts
- ✗Don't facepalm at a coworker's question or idea in Slack, it reads as condescending
- ✗Avoid using it as a response to someone sharing something vulnerable
- ✗Don't send it alone without context as it can feel passive-aggressive
- ✗Skip the triple facepalm (🤦🤦🤦) unless you're being dramatic with friends
It can be, depending on context. A lone 🤦 sent in response to someone's message, with no explanation, can feel dismissive. Adding words ("lol 🤦" or "not this again 🤦") or using it self-deprecatingly removes the passive-aggressive edge. In workplace Slack channels, be especially careful about facepalming at someone else's idea.
Yes, with caveats. Self-directed facepalms ("forgot to attach the file again 🤦") are safe and relatable. Facepalming at a coworker's question or idea comes across as condescending. It's not on the top 10 emojis to avoid at work, but context and your relationship with the recipient matter. When in doubt, stick to self-deprecating use.
Not inherently. It depends entirely on who you send it to and whether you're facepalming at them or at yourself. Self-directed facepalms are always fine. Facepalming at a friend's story in a group chat is fine. Facepalming at your boss's email in a reply-all is a terrible idea. The emoji itself is neutral; the rudeness comes from aiming it at someone in a way that dismisses them.
The reaction-tax in workplace Slack
| Subject of the implicit sentence | How it lands | Better default | |
|---|---|---|---|
| I (self-directed) | Endearing | 🤦 + short note ('forgot the attachment 🤦') | |
| We (shared external) | Bonding | 🤦 in the broken-build channel, fine | |
| You (peer-directed) | Condescending | Skip the 🤦, send a question instead | |
| They (third-party) | Catty | Move it off the work channel |
Caption ideas
Aesthetic sets
Fun facts
- •The Henri Vidal sculpture "Caïn" (1896) in the Tuileries Gardens, Paris, is often called the world's oldest facepalm. It shows the biblical Cain with his face buried in his hand after killing Abel.
- •Reddit's r/facepalm subreddit has over 8.1 million members, making the facepalm one of the few gestures with its own multi-million member community.
- •On WeChat, the facepalm emoji was designed by a team of 3-4 people over five months and is reportedly based on comedy actor Stephen Chow's facial expressions. Someone tried to trademark it for clothing in 2018.
- •The word "facepalm" first appeared in a Usenet post on May 15, 1996: "Christie facepalmed." It took 15 years for the OED to add it (2011) and 21 years for Merriam-Webster (2017).
- •Emojipedia founder Jeremy Burge predicted the facepalm emoji would be "very popular. There is no doubt." when previewing iOS 10.2 in October 2016.
- •The facepalm emoji uses ZWJ (Zero Width Joiner) sequences for its gendered variants: + + for 🤦♀️ and + + for 🤦♂️. Each also supports five skin tone modifiers, creating 18 total variants from one base emoji.
- •The Picard facepalm from Star Trek: TNG's "Deja Q" episode (season 3, 1990) became the internet's definitive facepalm image years before the emoji existed. The earliest YouTube upload tagging it as a "facepalm" was in May 2007. When Unicode approved the emoji in 2016, it was essentially canonizing a Patrick Stewart meme.
In pop culture
- •The Picard Facepalm meme from Star Trek: The Next Generation (S3E13 "Deja Q", 1990) directly influenced the creation of 🤦. The double facepalm clip from S3E16 "The Offspring" became even more iconic. When Unicode 9.0 added the facepalm emoji in 2016, Emojipedia noted the connection to the meme.
- •The 🤦 emoji appeared in Google's Year in Search 2017 video and was used in the official promotional materials, reflecting its rapid adoption as a universal reaction to the year's events.
- •In 2022, The Washington Post reported on Gen Z workers confusing older colleagues with emoji usage, specifically calling out 🤦 as one of the emojis that older workers found confusing when used as a Slack reaction without context.
- •Homer Simpson's "D'oh!" (The Simpsons, 1989-present) is the audio equivalent of 🤦. The word was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2001, predating the emoji by 15 years. Both serve the same function: instant, reflexive exasperation.
Trivia
For developers
- •The base emoji is . Gender variants use ZWJ sequences: (woman) and (man).
- •Skin tone modifiers ( through ) go between the base and the ZWJ: for medium-skin-tone woman facepalming.
- •Slack shortcode: or . The gender-neutral works on most platforms too.
- •On platforms that don't support ZWJ sequences, may render as 🤦♀ (two separate characters). Always test across platforms if displaying in UI.
It was approved as part of Unicode 9.0 in June 2016 and added to Emoji 3.0 the same year. Apple added it in iOS 10.2 (October 2016). The gesture itself is ancient, the word dates to 1996, and the Picard meme took off around 2007.
There are three versions: 🤦 (gender-neutral Person Facepalming), 🤦♂️ (Man Facepalming), and 🤦♀️ (Woman Facepalming). Each supports five skin tone modifiers, giving you 18 total variants. The gendered versions use ZWJ (Zero Width Joiner) sequences to combine the base emoji with gender signs.
On most devices, search "facepalm" in your emoji keyboard. On Slack, type or . On Windows, press Win+Period and search "face palm." On Mac, press Ctrl+Cmd+Space and search the same. The gender-neutral version is in Unicode.
See the full Emoji Developer Tools guide for regex patterns, encoding helpers, and more.
When do you use 🤦?
Select all that apply
- Person Facepalming Emoji (emojipedia.org)
- Facepalm meme history (knowyourmeme.com)
- How 'Facepalm' Became a Word (merriam-webster.com)
- face-palm Definition (merriam-webster.com)
- Facepalm most popular WeChat emoji in 2019 (chinadaily.com.cn)
- WeChat Facepalm Trademark Case (thatsmags.com)
- iOS 10.2 Emoji First Look: Shrug, Fingers Crossed, Face Palm (blog.emojipedia.org)
- Unicode 9.0 Released With 72 New Emojis (blog.emojipedia.org)
- Why Picard's Facepalm Became Star Trek TNG's Most Popular Meme (screenrant.com)
- Unicode Emoji Frequency (unicode.org)
- Unicode L2/15-054 Emoji Proposal (unicode.org)
- r/facepalm subreddit history (knowyourmeme.com)
- Top Emojis of 2025: Platform Trends (meltwater.com)
- Top 10 Emojis to Avoid at Work (theadaptavistgroup.com)
- Henri Vidal, Caïn, 1896 (artofdarkness.co)
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