Meaning
What does Kaomoji mean?
Kaomoji is a very popular, Japanese style emoticon that is made up of different characters available, expressing emotion in texting and online communications.
Often referred to as Japanese emoticons and formed from two Japanese words Kao (head) and moji (character). Kaomoji is very popular all around the world thanks to it being a creative way to express yourself over text messages.
Kaomoji is extremely diverse, as over 10000 variants exist all over the internet and can express things like individual emotions, complex actions, objects and whole stories.
Origin
What's the origin of Kaomoji?
The very first kaomoji appeared in 1986. on the website ASCII-NET which is an online web service community in japan.
The first emote was (^_^), which later became one of the most popular ones in the Japanese emoticon database.
In 1990. the popularity of Kaomoji’s skyrocketed with the introduction of online, text-based messaging services. Later on, the first animated emoticons were created based on these.
Spread & Usage
How did Kaomoji spread?
Since its introduction, Kaomoji’s are very popular to this day, given it being a simple yet complex way of expressing oneself through text.
Spreading from a small online community to all major messaging services and websites to this day, Kaomoji’s are widely used.