Smiling, Sweating Emoji

About

Smiling, Sweating Emoji refers to an image of a yellow emoji over a black background smirking and sweating with drops of water visible on its skin. The image was seemingly AI-generated and it trended on Twitter / X and Instagram in late 2023 as a reaction image and image macro. The emoji was also the centerpiece of the Imagine 2 Onions meme.

Origin

It's currently unknown who originally posted the Smiling, Sweating Emoji. Its first known post was on October 6th, 2023, in a message screenshot shared by X^[1] user @Demonic7340, gaining 32 likes in four months (shown below, left).

X^[2] user @Demonic7340 posted the image later on the same day, however, a higher-quality version with a wider crop was shared by Redditor^[3] comicguy69 on October 23rd, 2024, in an /r/Persona5 comment section (shown below, right).

Spread

The image went largely viral on November 7th, 2023, when Instagram^[4] user @hugeplateofketchup8 used it in a meme reading, "Imagine 2 Onions. Heck, Imagine 3 Onions," gaining over 129,100 likes in three months (shown below, left).

Then, on November 10th, 2023, X^[5] user @BigBabyScumbag captioned it, "when the waiter repeats my order back to me and it sounds fire," gaining over 89,000 likes in three months (shown below, right). The tweet gained viral reposts on Instagram^[6] in the following days.

Going into 2023, the image spread elsewhere on social media, evident in an NNN meme shared to /r/nonutnovember^[7] on November 27th, 2023, receiving over 220 upvotes in three months (shown below, left).

Usage of an AI-expanded version of the emoji also spread, evident in a post shared by X^[8] user @fallenchungus on December 25th, 2023, gaining over 3,800 likes in two months (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References