Say it with emojis?
No longer do we need to rely on Shakespearean rhyming couplets or sweeping romantic gestures to tell someone we like them. After vajina emojis, sex emojis and the emoji keyboard, the not-so-humble emoji has quickly become a generation's go-to to communicate their feelings. And now – it seems - it’s become the best way to land a date. UK-based company DrEd, conducted a study recently attempted to find out which sexually suggestive and flirtatious emojis were getting sent most frequently on Twitter in the US and Europe – but are the results that surprising?
Well, possibly not.
Studying the emojis used on Twitter in Europe, DrEd found that the heart eyes emoji landed at number one - getting mentioned over 380,000 times from August to September in 2015. In fact, the most popular emojis were pretty sweet with kissy face, a kiss and a smiling cat with heart eyes rounding out the top four. The rest of the top ten were more suggestive with an unpeeled banana and aubergine making an appearance at number 9 and 10 respectively. The Top 10 Flirting Emojis in Europe: 1. Heart eyes 2. Kissy face 3. Kiss 4. Smiling cat with heart eyes 5. Tongue sticking out 6. Man and woman smiling 7. Man and woman kissing 8. Lips 9. Unpeeled banana 10. Aubergine
Source: Comedy Central via Tumblr.com
The study also looked at emoji use through gender, determining that women were more likely to use emojis than men to flirt. But when it came to using more suggestive emojis, this was the only time men were the majority of users, using the aubergine emoji 52% of the time. We can’t say we’re surprised. When looking at emoji combinations, the study’s results found that the triple tongues were mentioned over 2,000 times while the pointing finger/okay sign made up around 417 mentions.
Source: DrEd.com
The study also revealed which countries use which emojis the most too (slightly fascinating, we're not gonna lie). The aubergine, for example, gets used the most in Georgia.
Source: DrEd.com
So, now you know.
Which emoji is your favourite when flirting? Tweet us @marieclaireuk