The 🙂 Is a Tiny Menace

It’s the nice-to-see-you smile, when it’s not nice at all

On first glance, the “slightly smiling face” is a nice, friendly emoji: 🙂

It’s certainly gentler than its unhinged-looking sibling, the “grinning face”: 😀

But watch it at work in this text exchange:

Or here:

And what about in office communication systems like Slack, where it’s sometimes used as punctuation, but the kind of punctuation that can make your words instantly more passive-aggressive, creepy, or snarky?

Indeed, on closer examination, that slightly smiling face is a lie. It mocks us and throws us off…