Emoji Of The Year 2025 Awarded To Feeling You've Had Since 2019

In a landmark decision that observers are calling "the most honest thing an international standards body has ever done," the Unicode Consortium voted Tuesday to formally standardize human exhaustion, approving a "Face With Bags Under Eyes" 🫩 emoji that has since become the most popular new pictograph of 2025. The measure passed unanimously among voting members Apple 🍎, Google, and Microsoft—a rare moment of corporate unity in acknowledging that everyone is, in fact, incredibly tired.

"We've reached nearly 4,000 emojis," said Unicode Technical Director Dr. Helena Voss, visibly fatigued, at a press conference following the vote. "Four thousand ways to avoid using words. And yet until this year, we had no standardized method for conveying that you haven't slept properly since 2019. That oversight has been corrected."

The emoji 🫩, which features drooping eyelids, pronounced dark circles, and what typographers describe as "a mouth that has given up," was approved as part of Emoji 16.0 in September 2024 but only reached widespread device availability in early 2025. Within three months, it had surpassed all other new releases in usage metrics.

"Three months into 2025 and everyone is already tired," observed another commenter beneath the announcement—a remark that cultural historians have since described as "the year, reviewed."

The approval comes amid what analysts are calling "the Great Emoji Slowdown," with Unicode Subcommittee Chair Jennifer Daniel publicly expressing hope that the public notices they are "encoding fewer emojis year after year." Emoji 16.0 represented the shortest candidate list in Unicode history, suggesting that peak emoji has been reached and humanity is now on the downslope of tiny pictures.

Not all emoji candidates were so fortunate. Sources close to the Consortium confirmed that an Apple Core 🍎 emoji was "withdrawn at the last minute" with no official explanation—a decision that has spawned widespread speculation. "Who silenced Apple Core? 🍏❌" asked one Reddit thread, which has since accumulated over 12,000 comments and spawned three competing conspiracy theories involving Tim Cook, the composting lobby, and a rogue faction within the Emoji Subcommittee itself.

Meanwhile, the tiny island of Sark 🇨🇶—population 529—successfully obtained its own flag emoji through what Unicode documentation describes as a "legal workaround," making it one of the smallest polities in human history to achieve symbolic representation on the global keyboard. "529 people out-lobbied entire continents," noted geopolitical analyst Marcus Chen. "Big Sark finally cashed in."

Other approved additions include a "Hairy Creature" 🦣 emoji carefully designed to maintain what officials termed "Sasquatch-Yeti diplomatic neutrality," and a Trombone 🎺 whose stated purpose is to represent "womp womp" failure sounds—marking the first time an international standards organization has formally encoded disappointment.

Looking ahead, Emoji 17.0 promises seven new pictographs including a Distorted Face 😵‍💫, Fight Cloud 💨, Orca 🐋, Treasure Chest 💰, and Landslide 🏔️—though observers note that Apple's Genmoji feature—which allows users to generate custom emojis using AI—may render the entire committee structure obsolete. "They're meeting while the building burns," said one industry analyst who requested anonymity because his employer is a Unicode voting member.

When asked to comment on the state of human communication, Dr. Voss pulled up the "Face With Bags Under Eyes" 🫩 on her phone and held it toward reporters for fourteen seconds without speaking.

The emoji is now available on iOS, Android, and most major platforms. Its arrival brings the total number of Unicode-approved emojis to 3,953—nearly four thousand ways, as one researcher put it, "to avoid typing." 🫩