Social media users baffled after realising popular emoji 'never actually existed' despite being convinced otherwise
Do you remember it?
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Social media users are convinced they remember a popular emoji that 'never actually existed'.
Emojis have become such a big part of how we communicate that most of us probably couldn't imagine texting without them.
But many social media users are now questioning their own memories after becoming convinced that one of their favourite emojis has mysteriously vanished.
"I cannot find it and now I'm realizing it doesn't exist but I remember it so vividly, is this just me?" Emily, with the TikTok handle @ugcbyemilyy, added.
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In the caption, Emily wrote: "This can't be a Mandela effect...," referencing the phenomenon where a large group of people remember an event or facts that never happened.
As described by a TikTok user, the emoji in question is a 'girl wearing her hair in a towel and she has cucumbers over her eyes like she is at the spa.'
The video struck a nerve, with TikTok users flooding the comments section swearing they remembered this exact emoji.
"I was just looking for her the other day! She absolutely existed!!" one user commented.
Another exclaimed: "NO GIRL I REMEMBER HER TOO!! SHE USED TO BE MY FAV EMOJI FOR SAYING "IM NOT GONNA OVER-REACT" she also had like hand on her towel? like a massage?"
Some users weren't having it: "I swear it’s like they’re deleting the emojis and then gaslighting us".
All 3,782 official emojis are published by the Unicode Consortium, which is the organisation that decides what emojis we all get to use.
While some existing emojis share similar characteristics with what iPhone and Android users are describing, there has never been an official emoji matching a woman wearing a towel with cucumbers over her eyes.
The closest official options are the 'Woman in Steamy Room' emoji on iOS, which shows a woman with a towel on her head but no cucumbers, and the 'Person Getting Massage' emoji, which is similar but missing some details.
The mystery was eventually solved by other TikTok users who figured out where the mysterious 'emoji' came from.
It turns out it was never an Apple emoji, it was part of Bitlife, a text simulator mobile game where you live out an entire digital life from birth to death, making choices along the way.
Available on iOS and Android, the game blew up when it came out and its custom emojis were seen all over social media, which is probably why so many people remember them as if they were real emojis.
Others in the TikTok comments remembered the emoji's origins: "ohhh the bitlife emoji! you had to download it for your phone".
Another confirmed: "it was a bitlife emoji. a lot of them were."
Someone else explained: "SO. I remembered it too until someone said Bitlife. It's totally from Bitlife ads.
"I checked Emojipedia and found out the spa emojis came out on IOS 11.1 in 2017 and has always looked the same."