What Emoji Really Mean, According to Science

​If you're texting your friend about a date and use that face emoji showing all the teeth, you could mean the date was awesome and you're super excited about it. But your friend may think you mean it was terrible and you're horrified about the prospect of ever seeing the guy again:

Some emoji look totally different on different phones, which can lead to miscommunication, according to a recent study published on GroupLens. Take a look at just how different a single emoji can look across platforms:

The possibilities for mixups are endless, and hilarious clearly; this will likely be the plotline of a romantic comedy starring Zac Efron and Anna Kendrick out next year!​ And it's not just that the emoji vary visually from blob-like to cute, round cartoon faces either. Researchers asked people to describe the emotions on the emoji on the various platforms and the responses varied widely — for example, people registered the teeth emoji on an Apple device as negative, while they registered the same emoji on a Google device as very positive:

But sometimes, the confusion isn't even your phone's fault. The researchers took an emoji from a single device and asked a group of people to describe it. The answers they got were all over the place. So you may want to make sure you and your BFFs are on the same page, emoji-wise. 

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