Smiling Buck Tooth Emoji

Submission 41,305

Part of a series on Emoji. [View Related Entries]

About

Smiling Buck Tooth Emoji, also known as the Stupid Emoji or Happy and Excited Emoticon, is a vector graphic emoticon and emoji that is smiling with its mouth wide open and its buck teeth showing. The emoji is often sourced from stock image websites like Dreamstime and Shutterstock, among others. In early 2023, memes using the smiling buck tooth emoji surfaced en masse when people associated its face with being "stupid." Thereafter, many memes surfaced that added captions to the emoji portraying stupidity on Twitter / X, Instagram and elsewhere online. Additionally, another buck tooth emoji that wasn't smiling was used in variant memes. The combination of both emojis was made into a buck tooth emoji GIF that was a fading transition between both, paired with captions that most often outlined a negative realization. In 2024, the Smiling Buck Tooth Emoji became a symbol for the Black or Chinese meme because it was X user @VLONEPREDATOR's profile picture.

Origin

The smiling buck tooth emoji was created by vector graphic artist Hafiza Samsuddin,^[1] also known as Captain Vector, in 2018. Its first known upload was to the website Stock Unlimited^[2] on September 27th, 2018. The emoji's original name was "Happy and excited emoticon" (shown below).

Starting in 2022, the smiling buck tooth emoji received minimal usage on Twitter.^[3]^[4]^[5] Viral usage wouldn't surface until 2023.

On October 21st, 2022, Twitter^[6] user @smetsee tweeted a different buck-toothed emoji, captioning it, "her: are you stupid / me:" gaining roughly 12,000 likes in eight months (shown below, left). The post later inspired the first-known, viral usage of the smiling buck tooth emoji, posted by Twitter^[7] user @icedanecr on May 21st, 2023, that used a similar caption reading, "him: are you stupid / me:" and received roughly 21,700 likes in 11 days (shown below, right).

Spread

Going into late May 2023, the smiling buck tooth emoji received more viral usage on Twitter. For instance, on May 23rd, 2023, Twitter^[8] user @yourenottheguy captioned the emoji, "This is how I feel off da sativa," gaining roughly 9,700 likes in nine days (shown below, left). On May 25th, Twitter^[9] user @lmp3rfect captioned it, "Me after missing social cues and insulting you on accident," gaining roughly 30,800 likes in one week (shown below, right).

The emoji's memetic usage spread to other social media sites in May 2023. For example, on May 30th, 2023, Tumblr^[10] user coughloop posted an iMessage screenshot that included the emoji, gaining roughly 6,400 notes in two days (shown below, left). On May 31st, Instagram^[11] user @mybloodyvirginmary posted their own iteration, gaining roughly 1,400 likes in one day (shown below, right).

Viral usage persisted on Twitter^[12] and elsewhere going into June 2023.

Buck Tooth Emoji GIF

As the emoji started going viral in late May and early June 2023, a GIF of the emoji gained usage on Twitter that was a fading transformation between the smiling buck tooth emoji and the other, non-smiling, buck tooth emoji (shown below, left). Currently, the GIF's first-known usage was on May 31st, 2023, when Twitter^[13] user @nandinipatell captioned it, "he mentioned a girl mid-story telling," gaining roughly 65,800 likes in nine days (shown below, right).

The GIF gained increased memetic usage going into June 2023, most often paired with captions that portrayed a negative realization. For instance, on June 2nd, 2023, Twitter^[14] user @peachcrisis captioned the GIF, "when you’re hanging out with him and having fun and he says 'my ex used to do this thing where-'" and gained roughly 15,700 likes in one week.

On June 7th, 2023, Twitter^[15] user @northstardoll tweeted a reversed version of the GIF that started with the non-smiling emoji and transitioned to the smiling one (shown below, left). The GIF was captioned, "when i find a new person to obsess over and have romantic delusions about," and gained roughly 129,700 likes in two days (shown below, right).

Here's What You Would Look Like If You Were Black or Chinese

Here's What You Would Look Like If You Were Black or Chinese refers to a series of posts in which selfies are race swapped with FaceApp or other programs so that the race of the person in them is changed to Black or Asian. Started by X / Twitter user @VLONEPREDATOR, the format spread on the platform in December 2023. The trend also became widely associated with @VLONEPREDATOR's profile picture, the Smiling Buck Tooth Emoji.