WhatsApp: What does the shooting star emoji mean?

Emojis came to reinvent the form of written communication between people, especially with the appearance of social networks and instant messaging services, where words, phrases, emotions or expressions can be replaced with graphic symbols. This is the case of the star with a circular trail.

Commonly, users think that it is a shooting star, but the reality is that its meaning is completely different and quite surprising.

From emojipedia, it appears as “dizzy” and is described as a symbol used in comics and other visual media to indicate that a person is dizzy. So is! It’s not even close to being a shooting star, but more of a reference to “seeing stars.”

Taking into account the origin of the emojis, this makes sense, because in Asian cartoons it is very normal to see the stars go around the head of a character when it hits or loses orientation. In this sense, the correct interpretation would be that the user who sends it feels dizzy, everything is spinning, or it can even be used when someone is ” happy “.

As you can see, the interpretation is always subject to the social and cultural contexts in which the WhatsApp conversation takes place , so many could have misused the emoji.

It is worth mentioning that, despite having the same Unicode encoding, each application can vary the design of each emoji to adapt to its operating system or interface. On many occasions this generates a great difference in the interpretation of the same symbol.

Some platforms are more explicit, varying the color of the contrail, and even adding more stars and lines to emphasize the dizziness effect.

In case it was a shooting star, its intention would change to make a wish, as well as the feelings that this awakens in people, such as joy, hope, illusion, emotion, among many others.

The truth is that on many occasions, we take the meaning of some emojis in WhatsApp based on their appearance while its actually completely different from what we think.