Imitando Emojis / Mimicking Emojis

About

Imitando Emojis or Mimicking Emojis refers to a trend in which people compare themselves or others to various emojis that look similar, typically by creating image macros with the caption "imitando emojis" and the accompanying emoji overlaid on top of a background photo. The memes gained initial spread on Twitter and Reddit in January 2020, reaching a viral spread starting in late June 2021 with several emoji variations of the meme being used as exploitables.

Origin

On October 29th, 2019, the earliest known example of an Imitando Emojis meme was posted on Reddit^[1] by the user u/KaiLenGO. The image features a teen boy mimicking the smiling face with sunglasses emoji, which received 80 upvotes and four comments in four years (seen below).

Spread

The most viral version of the Imitando Emoji meme features an image of Brazilian singer MC Mirella with one of her eyebrows raised paired with the raised eyebrow emoji. One of the earliest examples of the meme was posted on May 4th, 2021, by Twitter^[2] user @atlaschlmt. The post (shown below) garnered 49 likes and seven retweets in two years.

On July 16th, 2021, Twitter^[3] user @brendasafra posted a meme version of the speaking head in silhouette emoji, which garnered over 1,200 likes and 99 retweets in two years (shown below, left). On June 20th, 2023, Memedroid^[4] user @Son-Gohanda943 uploaded an Imitando Emojis meme of the crying emoji, which received over 150 reactions in one week (shown below, right).

The meme is also used by K-pop and other celebrity fandoms as reaction images on social media. For example, on June 29th, 2021, Twitter^[5] user @krysfavs posted a version of the raised eyebrow meme paired with an image of the Brazilian singer Anitta. The post (shown below, left) garnered 99 likes and two retweets in two years. On August 1st, 2021, Twitter^[6] user @kkissnana uploaded a version of the meme featuring the BTS singer Jungkook, which received over 600 likes and 120 retweets in two years (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References