If you’ve noticed the hashtags in your TikTok videos have disappeared into the online ether, only to be replaced by a string of seemingly meaningless gobbledygook that begins ud83d \ ude2d, don’t worry — your cat hasn’t been leaping on the keyboard. Well, at least not more than usual, and this isn’t some sinister hacking scheme. You’ve just experienced the latest TikTok glitch.
If you’ve been baffled by the arcane captions as you’ve scrolled through your “For You” page, you’re not alone. Users worldwide have been baffled by the weird technical hiccup and many have been taking to social media to try to find out just what is going on with the world’s fastest-growing social media app.
What does ud83d mean?
The mysterious caption replacing users’ own words seems to be a string of source code in the C, C++, or Java language. Although different variations of the phrase have been appearing, the “\ud83d \ udc80” code seems to be the most common. And there’s a rather obvious explanation. That particular code is used to show an emoji. Specifically, a smiley emoji.
Of course, TikTok being the way TikTok is, many people thought that they were just missing out on a new trend…
If you’re experiencing the phenomenon, you probably are going to be seeing fragments of code in your videos for a while — at least until the TikTok devs can figure out why the code is corrupted or otherwise afflicted and manage to patch up the glitch. At this point, reps for the video-sharing platform haven’t made any comment via their own official social media accounts.
It seems likely that the problem will persist until TikTok’s in-house IT team can find out the exact cause and implement a solution. Until then, users will just have to put up with the occasional blob of code showing up in the captions as they scroll — or, heaven forbid — just avoid using emojis for a bit.