Jennifer Daniel, on her “Did Someone Say Emoji?” blog:

First came Melting Face 🫠, our collective surrender to the liquid state.

Then Dotted Line Face 🫥, the visual representation of sublimation: turning from a solid into a gas just to escape a conversation.

Now, we have Distorted Face (U+1FAEA), a moment defined by tension: where you aren’t just feeling an emotion — you are being physically altered by it.

I’ll live, but it feels a tad spiteful that Apple only adds new emoji to the current-year OS updates. So this year’s 8 new emoji are in MacOS 26.4, but not MacOS 15.7.5, despite both being released this week.