👾 Alien Monster

Meaning

A friendly-looking, tentacled space creature with two eyes. Most major platforms style their design after aliens in classic arcade games like Space Invaders, rendering it purple and pixellated, as if in 8-bit graphics.

May be used of topics concerning extraterrestrial life, outer space, gaming, and computing, but also enjoys a range of idiosyncratic applications, such as conveying a sense of weirdness, wackiness, or excitement, given that the emoji looks like it is raising its arms shouting Yay! on many platforms.

May also be used to reference the streaming platform Twitch, given that the emoji’s color resembles the Twitch logo and both are strongly linked to gaming culture.

Samsung’s design previously resembled an octopus, with an even earlier Samsung design featuring a big-brained alien, à la Star Trek. Earlier designs from Google and Microsoft depicted more cartoon-like alien monsters.