Where the Snowflake Is Most Popular as Each State's Top Emoji Revealed

Emojis have become part of everyday life and our vocabulary, with many people relying on them heavily as a form of communication.

In-jokes, subtle references and even NSFW words are now expressed via an animation, which now number 3,633 emojis as of last September, according to Emojipedia.

While we all have our favorites, now each state's, and the country's, most-used emoji has been revealed, after millions of tweets were analyzed.

Website Crossword-Solver revealed the most popular emoji in the U.S. is the laughing crying face, as well as in 75 other countries, while it's also the number one globally.

Such is its popularity, the emoji was even named Oxford's Word of the Year in 2015, as they noted: "That's right—for the first time ever, the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year is a pictograph: [emoji], officially called the 'Face with Tears of Joy' emoji, though you may know it by other names.

"There were other strong contenders from a range of fields but [emoji] was chosen as the 'word' that best reflected the ethos, mood, and preoccupations of 2015."

Revealing America's top 10, after the crying laughing face (239 uses per 10,000 tweets), the influence of Wordle saw green squares in second place, used 179 times per 10,000 tweets, followed by yellow squares, used 148 times in 10,000 tweets.

The heart came next, used 144 times in every 10,000, and a variation on the most popular, the tilted crying-laughing face, was in fifth spot, used 139 times in every 10,000 tweets.

"Grids of green, yellow, and white squares began appearing on Twitter at the end of 2021 as users reported their results on the word game phenomenon Wordle.

"By March 2022, there were 15 million such tweets—and the colored squares were all among the ten most commonly used emojis in the U.S," they pointed out.

Also making the top 10 was another Wordle-inspired emoji, a black square, then the crying face, fire, 100 per cent emoji and finally a white square.

Crossword-Solver noted: "Countrywide, Americans use the fire emoji 0.79% of the time—but five states use the flame at a higher average rate than any other emoji.

"In some usages, the fire emoji means 'lit' (itself slang for "very good, enjoyable, or exciting"), hot (i.e,. sexy), or high/stoned.

"However, the top flame states include Colorado and Arizona, which are two of the most dangerous states for wildfires."

Expanding on states' most favored emojis, while most opted for fire, Wordle-esque tiles, hearts and a variation of tears, Crossword-Solver noted: "Three states favor a unique emoji of their own. Idaho uses folded hands in 0.54 per cent of tweets, making it the 'gratitude state.'

"Wyoming likes the smiling face with heart-eyes, while New Hampshire is the snowflake state, due to the weather rather than insults about political sensitivity."

Explaining their methodology for the data, which they gathered during the last two weeks of February, they said: "Crossword-Solver used the Twitter API to retrieve 9 million geotagged tweets.

"Based on this sample, they determined the most used emoji worldwide and for certain countries with available data. The maximum number of tweets from the same account was limited to 1 per day to exclude bots.

"The team used "unique appearances" to calculate the frequency of an emoji in the sample. This means that, for tweets that have the same emoji more than once, they only counted the first occurrence towards the total usage of that emoji.

"For the states of the U.S., Crossword-Solver selected the most used emoji above the national average (sum of all states)."

Earlier this year a fresh batch of emoticons was added to the repertoire, including new smileys, handshakes, food and everyday items.

More skin colors, including multi-racial handshakes, were included, while a pregnant person, and a pregnant man, have also been added.