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We’re finally finding out all the secret ways people use emoji thanks to Instagram
On Monday, Instagram revealed in a blog post that users can now hashtag emojis.
The exciting news swept the Instagram world and people immediately began hashtagging their hearts out. Users can now click the search bar and go to hashtags to see how all of their friends and strangers are using the descriptive emojis.
(Instagram)
Some trends are already emerging, so we decided to poll the most popular emojis to see how people were using them.
Instagram told Buzzfeed that the three most popular hashtagged emojis (so far) were the kiss emoji, the heart eyes emoji, and the crying-while-laughing emoji.
The kiss emoji had over 83,000 hashtags at the time of this post, the vast majority of which were selfies.
(Instagram)
When you look in search, it has a lot of people feeling their look:
A photo posted by Sairah Chaudhry (@saiirahhh) on Apr 27, 2015 at 1:21pm PDT
The heart eye emoji had even more hashtags with over 128,000 hashtags at the time of the post.
(Instagram)
It was also more diverse that the kiss emoji with photos ranging from animal pictures, to food snaps, to scenic shots, and of course quite a few selfies.
A photo posted by eleonoramagnanini (@eleonoramagnanini) on Apr 27, 2015 at 1:17pm PDT
The crying and laughing emoji had over 65,000 hashtags at the time of this post.
(Instagram)
Most of them were for pictures that were weird, funny, and possibly a little embarrassing.
A photo posted by Sophie Lak (@sophieditalak) on Apr 27, 2015 at 1:23pm PDT
Next, we decided to try some of our own favorite emojis. First up, the dog emoji.
(Instagram)
Predictably, searching this emoji yields a lot of pups (as well as a few random cats). At the time of this post, the number of dog hashtags had climbed to almost 13,000 hashtags. This was a pretty standard snap:
PompomPug #pug #haukevondersteinheide #pompom #puglife #eyes #mops
A photo posted by annie (@frauhelge) on Apr 27, 2015 at 1:25pm PDT
The monkey covering its eyes emoji had almost 23,000 hashtags.
(Instagram)
There were lots of couples posing together or kissing, not to mention selfies — a lot, a lot of selfies.
#picoftheday#instapic#selfie#me#🙈
A photo posted by Chiara Corrao (@kikiiii91) on Apr 28, 2015 at 5:41am PDT
One of my personal favorite emojis – the wine glass — didn’t have a ton of hashtags yet (only around 4,600 at the time of this post), but that number is likely to increase over the weekend.
(Instagram)
Unsurprisingly, these Instagrams involved a lot of wine, wine glasses, and people drinking.
California or France? Psssh, who cares. Monday's are always better with a glass of wine. #🍷
A photo posted by Foursquare (@foursquare) on Apr 27, 2015 at 2:58pm PDT
The 100 emoji was an extremely popular hashtag with nearly 39,000 posts. Most of them were quotes or inspirational pictures.
(Instagram)
As you can see, lots of words of #wisdom:
Up is the best place to go! #working #failureisnotanoption #godsgift #begreat #behumble #focus #💯
A photo posted by Dwight Hardy (@d_right1) on Apr 27, 2015 at 1:17pm PDT
The hands emoji — everyone’s favorite celebratory symbol — had nearly 12,000 tags at the time of this post. They ranged from food pictures to (surprise, surprise) a lot of selfies.
(Instagram)
There were also quite a few celebrating the emoji hashtag update.
A photo posted by Reni OMartins (@reniomartins) on Apr 27, 2015 at 12:12pm PDT
The painting nails emoji did not have a lot of variety, as you can see:
(Instagram)
99% of the 7,000 hashtagged posts were of nail art.
#ترميم #ديزاين #٠٩١٧٢٦١٨٢٣٣ #💅
A photo posted by MonaNailart (@nail_nailartlove) on Apr 27, 2015 at 10:30am PDT
The emoji crown had over 15,000 hashtags, but no one could agree what it meant — did it symbolize a king, queen, princess, prince, royalty, etc.?
(Instagram)
Because of this, there were lots of pictures of babies and pets ("my little princess") as well as people in the Netherlands celebrating Monday's King's Day. But personally, this was my favorite use of the hashtag:
Found some more gold from this weekend that shows how much I am feeling myself when I drink #👑
A photo posted by Sarah A. (@quesera_sarahx) on Apr 27, 2015 at 12:27pm PDT
And last of all, the broken heart emoji.
(Instagram)
Of the over 13,000 hashtags people have tagged so far, most of them were of love lost and the pain the Instagram user was feeling.
#😕 #😭 #💔 #💔🏧 #whyme #Avrillavigne #avrillavigneismyqueen #doei
A photo posted by 23-05-2015❤️ (@kelismelissa) on Apr 27, 2015 at 1:31pm PDT
Sadly, the only emoji you won’t see a hashtag for is the infamous eggplant.
(Instagram)
Long used to symbolize the male anatomy, Instagram confirmed to Buzzfeed’s Katie Notopoulos that it had blocked the emoji similarly to how it also blocks other innapropriate hashtags from search because “it consistently is used for content that violates [the] community guidelines.”
This is dispite the fact that you can still search controversial hashtags like the gun and the pill:
(Instagram)
NOW WATCH: The Incredible Story Of The Emoji — Told Entirely In Emojis
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