You’ll never guess Instagram’s most popular emoji

If a picture is worth a thousand words, an emoji is worth at least a million. Sometimes, it seems that those little yellow faces can explain our feelings better than words can.

It should be no surprise that some emojis are more popular than others – the smiling poo represents a much wider range of emotions than, say, the emoji of the girl crossing her arms (or is she hugging herself?). Instagram recently rounded up its twenty most used emojis, and the results are pretty [insert shocked emoji here].

The list includes obviously favorites, like the applause hands at seventeen, the red 100 at number fourteen, and the thumbs up at twelve. But a few of the usual top dogs are missing: shocked monkey, peace sign, and red heart, which held first place only six months ago, didn’t make the cut.

In a shocking twist, Instagram’s #1, most popular emoji is one that’s already lived in the limelight quite a bit this year. Yup, you guessed it: the face with tears of joy emoji. Already named Oxford Dictionary’s “Word of the Year,” this smiley is basically on its way to EGOTing. At the time of writing this story, the tears of joy emoji currently graces 960,237 posts on Insta, and shows no sign of slowing down.

Here is the full Top 20 Emojis of Instagram list. Check if your favorite was included, and if it wasn’t, start using it in captions more often so it makes next year’s list.

Face with tears of joy for President!

(Images via Apple and Instagram.)