Unamused Face Emoji

A yellow face with slightly raised eyebrows, a small frown, and eyes looking off to the side. Officially named "Unamused Face" by Unicode, but almost nobody calls it that. In practice, this is the side-eye emoji.

The side-eye does more communicative work than it should be able to. It packs skepticism, irritation, mild judgment, and passive-aggressive disapproval into a single sideways glance. When someone sends 😒 in response to your excuse for canceling plans, they're not typing a paragraph about why they're annoyed. They don't need to. The eyes say it.

Emojipedia describes it as conveying "irritation, displeasure, grumpiness, and skepticism, as if giving the side-eye." That's accurate, but it undersells the range. 😒 also works for resigned disappointment ("my flight got delayed again 😒"), weary sarcasm ("oh great, another meeting 😒"), and the kind of silent criticism that avoids direct confrontation while making your position crystal clear.

Here's the twist: 😒 is losing ground. Meltwater's 2024 emoji ranking data places it around 76th globally, down from its peak. The 🙄 eye roll and 😐 neutral face have eaten into its territory. When you want sarcasm, 🙄 is more dramatic. When you want cold indifference, 😐 is more unsettling. 😒 sits in the gap between them: annoyed enough to frown, but not annoyed enough to roll your eyes.

On social media, 😒 thrives in reaction contexts. It's the emoji you slap on a screenshot of a bad take, a caption under a frustrating news headline, or a reply to someone who just said something you fundamentally disagree with but aren't going to argue about.

The side-eye gesture itself got a massive cultural boost in January 2023 when TikToker @lmfaomal coined "bombastic side eye" in a duet video, saying "Bombastic side eye, criminal offensive side eye." The video pulled over 9.6 million plays and 2 million likes in roughly a month. By June 2023, Twitter user @dondawastaken posted a custom emoji artwork of the bombastic side eye that got 373,000 likes. The phrase became shorthand for exaggerated judgment, and 😒 rode the wave as its closest official emoji equivalent.

In texting, 😒 operates differently depending on who's sending it. Among close friends, it's often playful mock-offense: "you ate my leftovers 😒" is a joke, not a confrontation. From someone you're not close with, it reads as genuine displeasure. Context is everything. A sarcastic one-liner plus 😒 leans toward teasing. A flat correction plus 😒 leans toward real annoyance.

Gen Z tends to use 😒 more ironically than literally. UPrinting's generational breakdown found that 74% of Gen Z users deploy emojis differently from their intended meanings. For millennials and older users, 😒 still means what it looks like: I'm not amused.

😒 is almost never flirty in isolation, but it can serve flirtation when it's clearly performative. "You're so annoying 😒" from someone who keeps texting you is playful push-pull. "Whatever 😒" from someone going quiet is genuinely unamused. The key tell: if they keep the conversation going after the 😒, it's friendly. If it's the last message, it's real.

• •Followed by more messages = playful, not actually annoyed
• •Standalone 😒 with no follow-up = probably genuine displeasure
• •Combined with 💅 or 😏 = sassy flirting territory
• •Combined with 👋 or ✌️ = they're done with this conversation

The side-eye predates smartphones by centuries. As a social gesture, the sideways glance communicates judgment, suspicion, or disapproval without the commitment of direct confrontation. You can deny a side-eye. You can't deny pointing at someone and saying "I disapprove."

The gesture has particular cultural significance in African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and Black culture more broadly, where "giving side-eye" has been a recognized communicative act long before emoji existed. Merriam-Webster added "side-eye" to the dictionary in 2020, defining it as "a sidelong glance or gaze especially when expressing scorn, disapproval, contempt, or veiled curiosity."

The emoji version arrived with Unicode 6.0 in 2010, part of the push to unify emoji across Japanese carriers (SoftBank, KDDI, DoCoMo) and global platforms. The character went through naming revisions during the FPDAM8 review process, with Japanese experts influencing the final design. It landed as "UNAMUSED FACE" at U+1F612U+1F612, though the "side-eye" label has always been more accurate to how people actually use it.

The "bombastic side eye" TikTok trend of January 2023 gave the gesture a second life online. TikToker @lmfaomal's catchphrase ("Bombastic side eye, criminal offensive side eye") pulled 9.6 million plays. A custom emoji artwork of the concept got 373,000 likes on Twitter/X in June 2023. The trend didn't create side-eye culture, but it gave a name to the most dramatic version of it.

Approved in Unicode 6.0 (October 2010) as U+1F612U+1F612 UNAMUSED FACE. Added to Emoji 1.0 in June 2015. Part of the Emoticons block (U+1F600U+1F600-U+1F64FU+1F64F). Does not support skin tone modifiers.

The naming process had some drama. During the FPDAM8 review of the original Japanese carrier emoji sets, Japanese experts submitted document N3711 requesting glyph and name changes for several characters. The character at this codepoint went through design revisions during the Tokyo meetings before settling on "UNAMUSED FACE" with its characteristic sideways-looking eyes and frown.

1. 2010Unicode 6.0 approves 😒 as U+1F612 UNAMUSED FACE↗
2. 2015Added to Emoji 1.0, cross-platform standardization↗
3. 2016Apple redesigns nearly all emoji with more detailed, 3D-like rendering↗
4. 2018Samsung aligns its 😒 design closer to Apple/Google, reducing cross-platform confusion↗
5. 2023"Bombastic side eye" TikTok trend boosts side-eye culture, 😒 usage spikes↗

The side-eye means different things depending on where you are.

In Black American culture, side-eye has deep roots as a form of non-verbal communication. It's not just annoyance. It's a full commentary delivered through a glance. "Giving someone the side-eye" can convey skepticism, disbelief, disapproval, or a warning, all without a single word. That depth is part of why 😒 works so well online, where Black culture shapes internet language and meme vocabulary in ways most users absorb without realizing the source.

In Japan, where the emoji originated, direct expression of displeasure is culturally moderated. The concept of *kuuki wo yomu* (reading the air) means that indirect signals like a sideways glance carry real communicative weight. 😒 fits naturally into a communication style where saying "I'm annoyed" directly would be too blunt, but a subtle side-eye says it without breaking social harmony.

In workplace culture globally, a PLOS ONE study on emoji interpretation found that women rate negative-emotion emojis more negatively than men do. A male coworker sending 😒 might read as casual grumbling. The same emoji from a female coworker might be read as more aggressive, the same gendered interpretation bias that shows up in research on "resting bitch face."

• •On Twitter/X alone, 😒 had been used 459 million times as of 2018, placing it among the most-used face emojis on the platform. Its usage has since declined as 🙄 and 😑 have grown.
• •The "bombastic side eye" TikTok trend spawned a custom emoji artwork in June 2023 that got 373,000 likes on Twitter/X. The artist (@dondawastaken) created what the official Unicode set hadn't: a side-eye with attitude.
• •Side Eye Chloe, the 2013 YouTube meme of a girl giving her sister the most withering sideways glance imaginable, later sold as an NFT during the 2021 crypto boom. The side-eye literally became a financial instrument.
• •A PLOS ONE study found that women interpret negative-emotion emojis more negatively than men do. The same 😒 from the same person reads differently depending on the gender of the recipient.
• •😒 currently ranks around 76th in global emoji frequency, having slid from its peak as 🙄 captured the sarcasm market and 😐 captured the deadpan market.

• •The biggest risk: 😒 reads as genuine annoyance when you meant playful sarcasm. Without vocal tone, the frown wins. If you're joking, add words or a follow-up message so the recipient doesn't think you're actually upset.
• •In professional settings, 😒 carries more weight than intended. A casual "ugh, another meeting 😒" in Slack can read as openly complaining about your team's processes to someone who doesn't know you well.
• •Cross-generationally, 😒 means different things. Boomers and Gen X tend to read it literally (displeasure). Gen Z may read it as ironic or performative. Millennials split both ways. When in doubt, assume the receiver will take it at face value.

• •On Apple devices, 😒 shares its distinctive side-eye direction with 😏, causing frequent confusion. Users intending to send a smirk often accidentally send unamused, and vice versa. The shared eye direction with opposite mouth shapes creates one of the most common emoji mix-ups.
• •In K-drama fan communities, 😒 is the standard reaction emoji for second lead syndrome (when the audience wants the protagonist to choose the other love interest). The side-eye perfectly captures the fan frustration.

• •Codepoint: U+1F612U+1F612. No variation selector needed. Part of the Emoticons block (U+1F600U+1F600-U+1F64FU+1F64F).
• •Shortcodes: :unamused::unamused: on Slack, GitHub, and Discord. Some platforms also accept :side_eye::side_eye: as an alias.
• •Does not support skin tone modifiers (no ZWJ sequences).
• •When building emoji pickers, consider grouping 😒 with 🙄, 😑, and 😐 under "negative/annoyed" rather than with 😏 (which shares the same eyes on Apple but has a completely different meaning).

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