Apparently Sending This One Emoji To An Ex Could Now Land You In Jail

I broke up with my last girlfriend before I even had a smartphone (this was back in 2010), so I don’t know what are and are not the appropriate emojis to send your ex.

I guess a bunch of happy faces to show her you aren’t miserable if she asks, or, if you want to win her back, a bunch of sad faces to let her know you miss her?

Maybe a praise hands emoji when she says she can’t do this anymore? That would probably piss her off.

I’m not sure to be frank. This seems like a world I don’t ever want to enter.

But I do now know there’s one emoji you shouldn’t ever send to your ex, because it put one dude in jail.

For an emoji.

From The Telegraph:

22-year old Frenchman has been sentenced to three months in prison for texting his ex-girlfriend an emoji in the form of a pistol, in the first such ruling of its kind in France.

The court in Valence in the southern Drôme département ruled that the gun-shaped character at the end of a mobile phone text message constituted a “death threat in the form of an image”, and handed the accused a six-month sentence, with three suspended.

The woman said she suffered nightmares after receiving the emoji and was afraid to go anywhere near her ex. It’s certainly illegal to threaten anyone in a way that makes them worried for their own well-being. And if you took a picture of a real gun and mailed it to someone, you would no doubt be convicted.

I guess this isn’t that different. Who’d have thought? Emojis: not harmless.

Just don’t ever do anything that people would mistake for you having a desire to murder them. That’s the safe way to date.