Joanna McDonald

The societal implications of cat emojis

May 18, 2026

Those who text me regularly are very familiar with the iPhone cat emojis.

To me, the cat emojis are more than just a cute cat. They describe emotion in a way that differentiates them from a regular emoji with an equivalent base meaning.

The most powerful one

The most powerful cat emoji.
Clearly these two emojis convey very different things. They have a few things in common, but let's look at the differences.



The idea that these two smirk emojis are so radically different seems silly at first. But looking at the venn diagram, all that they have in common is the smirk and the color yellow.

The cat smirk, as evident from the diagram, gives off a self-assuredness and confidence that the OG simply does not. The cat smirks just as the OG does, but it looks you directly in the eyes, with its downturned eyebrows only further emphasizing its emotion.

The OG smirk is known to have sexual undertones. Everybody knows this. It's a bit uncouth, really. The bedroom eyes that don't even look directly at you allude to the perverted thoughts the OG smirk emoji possesses.

The cat smirk can represent more than just sexuality, while the OG tends to be used exclusively in suggestive contexts. The cat could represent sexuality as well, but unlike the OG, it feels more natural and less forced to receive. It's a pleasant change of pace from the OG, which feels like sexual harassment to use sometimes because of how straightforward it is.

Scenario:

As you can see, upon receiving these two messages, the reaction is quite different. The possible responses are quite different as well. To the cat smirk, one may want to inquire further what was so great about the day to find out the reason for using the emoji. To the OG smirk, one will likely assume the meaning behind the emoji, that something sexual happened

I believe the cat emoji to convey the true meaning of a smirk.

In real life, a smirk represents a sly, knowing confidence. The cat smirk exemplifies this perfectly. The OG smirk also shows this to an extent, but its design is so implicity sexual that it ruins any non-sexual use cases of the emoji. The cat smirk has the ability to maintain a neutral or even completely non-sexual tone.

Societal influence has ruined the OG smirk.

I believe we are too far gone in the history of the use of the OG smirk for it to ever feel non-sexual.

The cat smirk is a game changer. It's just waiting for the world to bear witness.