Face Vomiting

Usually disgust, sometimes a real stomach report. The puking face turns the gag reflex into a reaction: spoiled leftovers, a gore clip, a take so bad it turns your stomach. After a line like "ate bad sushi" or a hangover confession, it is literal. Otherwise it usually means "this repulses me".

What does it mean when someone sends you 🤮?

Check the target: your post, or you? Under a food photo, screenshot or link, it roasts the thing you shared. Under your selfie or outfit post, it roasts you, and that is where the joke stops.

Then weigh the sender. A close friend mocking your new haircut is doing a bit; a stranger dropping it under every post is showing contempt. Ask what grossed them out, or mute them.

Where did the vomiting face come from?

Chat apps had it before Unicode did. Skype's emoticon set included a vomiting face by June 2015. A 2016 Unicode proposal for new faces drew on designs messaging companies already used and on user requests, and treated vomiting as a separate reaction from the nauseated 🤢. Unicode added 🤮 in 2017.

The vomit face has also worked as a protest sign, first as a sticker. During Brazil's 2016 impeachment fight, Facebook users flooded a political party's page with Facebook's own vomiting sticker, a coordinated protest called vomitaço, to reject Dilma Rousseff's removal. A study of a Flemish nationalist party's Facebook page, with examples from May 2017, found vomit stickers under anti-Muslim posts, expressing contempt for people rather than a decision.