Here’s What The Question Mark Box Your Friend Just Texted You Actually Means

Ever text a friend only to get a response that looks like a series of question marks within a box? Yep — that’s the dreaded mystery question mark box emoji, the one that tells you something is very wrong (and then makes you wonder what the heck your friend is even trying to tell you). It’s even scarier if it’s, say, coming from your boss or your partner in the middle of a text fight.

Since it’s World Emoji Day on July 17, you’ll probably end up seeing lots of emojis coming through — including the frustrating question mark box emoji. You’ll see them all over Twitter and Facebook and Instagram — and maybe you’ll use some extra yourself. If you do get the question mark box emoji, it’s not apocalyptic, and your phone probably isn’t on its way out — but it might mean you sorely need an iPhone update.

So, What Even is World Emoji Day?

Basically, it’s the day we all celebrate emojis, which have been around in some form since 1998. Shigetaka Kurita came up with the concept while working at NTT DoCoMo, a massive Japanese communications company, according to Wonderopolis. Interestingly, when you open up the Calendar emoji on your phone, you’ll see that it says July 17. How meta is that?

However, if your phone isn’t updated when the new emojis are released, you might not see them immediately. So when an emoji update is released and gifted upon the masses — like, say, the gender-inclusive couples of 2019! — if your phone is not updated, you likely won’t be able to see them or send them. If you’ve got an Android, you won’t see the question mark box, but you will see a blank rectangle with nothing inside of it.

What Emojis Will Be Released?

230 emojis are set be added in 2019 — 59 single emojis, totaling 230 when you look at skin and hair tone variants. In 2019, you’ll see all of that plus flamingos, otters, guide dogs, sloths, a Hindu temple, a sari, and a waffle. There’s also a new white heart, which is pretty cool.

Although we wonder how this white heart emoji shows up, say, in captions on Instagram. Maybe it’ll have an outline, or it’ll be more of a cream color? Or maybe sticking it in the middle of all the other colors of hearts will make it pop. Needless to say, we’re intrigued.

And if you’re really curious about how people use their emojis, look no further than Emoji Tracker! It tracks the use of emojis on Twitter in real-time, which is crazy. The tracker itself can be a little visually overstimulating, as it is quite literally a live tracker of emoji usage. We tried to follow how the creator made the tracker, but we think we’ll just enjoy the end product instead.

What Are People’s Favorite Emojis?

The top two emojis are the face-with-tears-of-joy (its actual name) and the red heart! These two seem to stay in the top two no matter what, but it would be interesting to be able to look back at certain days in history to see which emojis were the most popular.

If you take a look at the history of emojis, you’ll see that the emojis have been getting better and better, and more inclusive. Back in 2015, we saw varying skin tones, while more women were added in 2016. We are finally seeing some gender inclusivity with the couple emojis, but there are still a lot of underrepresented groups of people in the emoji world.

In 2017, there were more gender-neutral emojis and in 2018, we got different hair colors, according to Emojipedia. 2019 adds two very important emojis to the mix: it offers emojis for people with varying skin tones holding hands. And we love it! More so, emojis representing disability and differing abilities were added.

What Other Emojis Will We See Soon?

When it comes to future emojis, wouldn’t it be cool of you could hover over your wine glass and turn the red wine into rosé? Or white wine? Or a glass of bubbly? Yeah — that’s under consideration, y’all. Just imagine how intricate your Venmo payment receipts could look with these specific emojis!

Interestingly, Unicode, who makes the emojis, has a particular stance regarding specificity. “Until now, Unicode has taken the position that each emoji should not be too specific where possible, and that one emoji should represent an entire category of objects or items, rather than a specific version,” according to Emojipedia. While we understand this for objects, like a car, we are glad that they stepped up and added skin tone variations so more people could feel represented.

In the end, people love little pictures. They make our texts prettier, they help us add extra emphasis to our intentions, and maybe they even make us all feel like kids again. Happy World Emoji Day! And, oh, update your phone to avoid that question mark box!