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Comment by bchanudet | Hacker News Reader

Emojis can have ambiguity too. My friends and have been using the eye roll emoji to signal we're being sarcastic for about 10 years. The un-animated version of this emoji looks like "I'm not really thinking what I'm saying", especially on Discord/Twitter.

I've recently a colleague who used the tongue out emoji for sarcasm and the eye roll one for, well, eye rolling with disdain in reaction to something.

The first chat discussions were then quite awkward, because when I were to write something like "You should have tested your code before deploying it... :eyeroll:", he was thinking I was openly looking down on him in front of the team.

We had to have a real discussion about it. It made me tone down my use of emojis - and sarcasm. I suppose using animated emojis (they were in MSN I think?), or GIF reactions would have made the things clearer.

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That really is interesting, because as far as I'm aware, I've only seen (and used) the eye roll emoji for, well, eye rolling. At least the iOS one also looks very disdainful to me. So if you had written "you should have tested this " to me, I would indeed have felt pretty bad about it. A more appropriate use would be something like "I walked all the way to there, but they turned me away because they bungled up my appointment ", i.e. something commiserate about. And based on my observation and recollection, I really don't think I'm in the minority here.

> My friends and have been using the eye roll emoji to signal we're being sarcastic for about 10 years.

But why would you assume this works for a random stranger? It seems much more logical to assume they’ll interpret the thing you’ve written as being said while actually rolling your eyes.

That said, it seems entirely appropriate to look down on someone that doesn’t test their code before deploying.

I think at some point you "forget" what some emoji really mean. I've kept my circle of friends quite small in the last couple decades, and we're all using this emoji for sarcasm. It's akin to private jokes, that crack you and your friends up every time, and then when you try one of those with other people, you're the only one laughing.

My other colleagues were not confused by my usage of the emoji, although they've known me for some time now, and they know that I'm not the type of person to actually roll my eyes while talking to someone, or even look down on them.

At least it was a nice reminder that our ways, customs and habits, no matter how normal they seem to ourselves, can still look crazy from the outside.

But I agree with you, it may have been one of the best sentence to use this emoji with. :)

I read this and immediately thought "Holy crap, you eye rolled at him with that comment?! I'd be devastated." Interesting how it works for different people.

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