If we want to understand the past, one way is to look to art and literature. If we want to understand the present, however, we look to emojis.
Sometimes words just don't cut it and the little animated characters are practically a language of their own. Understood across countries and cultures, there are few things a heart eyes emoji, a raised hands emoji or, dare we say, a peach emoji can't express.
Today marks World Emoji Day and to celebrate, Twitter has released a breakdown of the most used emojis on Irish Twitter from the start of 2020 to July.
And let's just say, breakdown is the word for it.
With a large chunk of the year so far spent in lockdown, in the build up to lockdown and worrying about lockdown, it's no wonder that many of us turned to our phones more than ever. Messaging each other kept bonds tight and staved off loneliness.
Even in our darkest times, we laughed through it – or at least if the most popular emoji on Twitter is anything to go by. The crying laughing emoji topped the charts, because most of the time we've got to laugh to stop ourselves from crying, right?
Up next was the crying face emoji, understandable in a year marked by such profound loss, suffering and hardship. To be fair though, who hasn't replied to a video of a dog doing something cute with a crying emoji, so it might not be as bad as it looks.
Rounding out the top three was the worried face emoji, because obviously. Not only that, but Twitter usage of the worried face emoji grew by 415% year over year, up from 16th place.
But there was still plenty of love and happiness to go around, as the heart eyes emoji came in at number 5 and the smiling face with hearts emoji grew by 119% year over year, up to 8th from 14th.
When it came to talking about Covid-19, we weren't short on emojis either. The house emoji topped the charts, as people pledged to stay and home and urged others to do the same, while the germ emoji – dark horse of the emoji vernacular that it is – snuck up to number 2.
Showing our appreciation for the frontline workers keeping our country going is hugely important during these times, and especially on Twitter where users shared their support and stories of goodwill with the applauding hands emoji.
But if you want to look at the most culturally sensitive parts of our experience of a pandemic, you have to look at the trending emojis during the first six months of the year. Our national dash to stock up on groceries before lockdown was captured in the shopping trolley emoji, while the struggle to buy toilet rolls led the toilet roll emoji to jump up to number three.
So when the historians of the future want to explore what life was like in the year Covid-19 spread across the world, they'd do a lot worse than scrolling through our timelines.
