The One and Only Time You'll See The Thumbs Up Emoji From Me

edited with the signature system

Why the 👍 emoji feels passive-aggressive, and why I can't believe I'm the one saying it.

(Also, having that yellow emoji on my page is an aesthetic nightmare. Just had to say that.)

And yes, I know how that sounds.

My Thumbs Up Story

I was talking to a friend last week and somehow we ended up on the topic of the thumbs up emoji.

I told her I despise it. Like, irrationally. I couldn't explain why. Something about receiving one just makes me feel dismissed. Like I said something that mattered and got a yellow hand in return.

She looked at me and said, 'me too.'

So naturally I went down a rabbit hole. Because that's what I do. And it turns out this is not just us. This is a whole thing. A widely documented, heavily debated, viral-level thing. 

When a thumb becomes a conversation-ender

Here's what I found.

For a lot of people, the thumbs up has shifted from a sign of agreement to something that feels like a door closing. It carries the same energy as 'k.' Or 'whatever.' It says I have received your message and I am done with you now.

The Reddit threads on this are wild. One person described it as feeling like walking into your boss's office, saying something important, and watching them look you in the eye, give you a slow thumbs up, and turn back to their screen.

This isn't a fringe opinion, either. The debate made international headlines. The New York Post ran 'Gen Z canceled the hostile thumbs-up emoji.' The Daily Mail went with why nobody should be using it. Psychology Today wrote about it. TikTok is full of it. This tiny yellow hand started a genuine cultural conversation about how we communicate through screens.

(I had no idea! I honestly thought it was a ‘just me’ thing.)

Why the thumbs up emoji feels rude (even when it's not meant to)

Now here's where it gets interesting.

According to pretty much every article I read, this is overwhelmingly a generational divide. Gen Z and younger millennials tend to read the thumbs up as passive-aggressive. Older generations, Gen X and boomers in particular, tend to use it sincerely. Got it. Agreed. Good job. Nothing more.

I'm 57. (how did that happen?)
Which means, according to the research, I should be in the 'it's just a thumbs up, calm down' camp.

But I'm not. I'm firmly in the 'that emoji just told me to go away' camp.

Which is funny. And a little ironic. Because I've been here before.

The ellipsis situation

A few years ago I wrote a blog post defending the ellipsis. The three little dots. I loved them. Still do, honestly. To me they felt like a trailing thought, an invitation, a pause.

But younger generations had declared the ellipsis passive-aggressive. Hostile, even. Apparently when your boss texts 'sounds good...' it reads less like casual warmth and more like I'm disappointed in you but I won't say why.

I thought that was a bit ridiculous. I wrote about it. I basically said, we can use whatever punctuation we want. Period. Or, you know...

(You can read that post here.)

And I still believe that.

But now here I am, on the other side of a nearly identical debate, feeling exactly the way Gen Z felt about my beloved dot, dot, dot. I'm reading a thumbs up the way they read an ellipsis. As dismissive. As cold. As not enough.

The irony is not lost on me.

What we're really talking about

I don't think this is actually about an emoji. Or punctuation. Or generational divides.

I think it's about effort.

When someone sends you a thoughtful message and you respond with a single tap, there's a gap. Between what was given and what was returned. And in that gap, all kinds of stories get written. They don't care. They're annoyed. They're brushing me off.

That gap is where the thumbs up lives.

And it's the same gap the ellipsis lives in for younger people. The same gap that a period at the end of a text lives in. The same gap that 'k' has always lived in.

We're all just trying to read tone through a screen. And sometimes we're getting it wrong, in slightly different directions, depending on what we grew up with.

What I'm doing about it

Nothing, really. I still don't like the thumbs up. I still use the ellipsis. I'm a contradiction and I'm fine with it.

But I think there's something worth considering. The way we communicate is shifting constantly. The symbols stay the same but the meaning underneath keeps moving. And every generation is both the one being misread and the one doing the misreading.

If nothing else, maybe we could all just type a few more words. A 'got it, thanks' instead of a thumb. A 'sounds great' instead of silence.

Sidenote: I know. In a world where real things are happening, the thumbs up emoji is not a problem. I recognize that. This is just something I noticed, something that made me curious, and something I wanted to share.

And to all my lovely friends who've thumbs-upped me in the past: you're lovely. I know you weren’t dismissing me. That's kind of the whole point of this post.

Just please, for the love of all things lovely and good, don't thumbs-up this post.

Tell me I'm not alone.

♡

Thank you for being here.

Please say hello in the comments below, I love hearing your thoughts.

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Until next time... Happy beautiful new week.

xx

Kim

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