Levitating businessman, MIBSL, the jumping rude boy, hovering man, man in black…… This emoji🕴has many names you may heard or not. Besides, there are too many people asking us 'why this weird emoji even exists?'…

Well, I think maybe it is time to introduce this emoji to everyone.

🔺emoji🕴from various platforms

Some Basic Information About🕴

The official name of emoji 🕴 is 'Person in suit levitating'. It was released on June 16, 2014 as Unicode version 7.0, and belongs to sub-category 'person-activity'

It is not a commonly used emoji, in this year's most used emoji ranking,🕴is at Rank 838, which is in the middle level and is not very conspicuous. Even you use emojis almost every day, you may never pay attention to this little guy.

🔺 🖼 CREDIT: Unicode.org

However, even if you never use it once, it is undeniable that the story behind it is very curious.

The Funny Origin And Design Concept Of🕴

The origin of 🕴can be traced back to 1990's. At the time, Microsoft was working on Internet Explorer 4.0, and the system included a font called Webdings, you can see it as a black & white symbol set designed by Microsoft.

And this weird floating suitman was designed by Vincent Connare, an American type designer and former Microsoft employee. It was inspired by Walt Jabsco, the fictional character which based on a photograph of Peter Tosh, a reggae musician and a former member of the Wailers, and had become a central artwork to 2 Tone Records.

If you are a ska fan, you definitely should use this emoji!

🔺 Peter Tosh (right) 🆚 Walt Jabsco 🆚 levitating businessman emoji (iOS version)

According to the Newsweek's interview to Connare, he said——

"I had a Specials Japanese import LP, and I saw one of the keywords was 'jump' so thought it would be good to make a jumping, pogoing man", "The style of the 2 Tone guy was black on white, and it was graphic, so it was easy to make something like it into a font".

In addition, since 🕴was designed by Microsoft in 90's, it has gone through a series of design changes (here we only discuss Microsoft's design).

🔺In each update, 🕴will have varying degrees of design changes, from black and white to color emoji, color changes for clothing, and color changes for ties, etc.

How People Use 🕴 On Social Media

Although you may not often use this levitating businessman, it can be observed on internet occasionally. From our new Tag Cloud and Relation Chart analyzed by pure AI algorithm, you can see how netizen use 🕴 on social media.

🔺The Tag Cloud and Relation Chart of 🕴 analyzed by pure AI algorithm

Except for the usages above, just like ska lovers, fans in certain fields prefer to use this emoji to refer to a specific person, movie or TV series. It is also a great way to spread this rarely used emoji🕴.

🔺As for you, is this emoji stands for Men in Black, Michael Jackson, or the Grim Reaper from Guardian: The Lonely and Great God?


From a black & white symbol to an official emoji that was added in Unicode 7.0 in 2014, this process has gone through about 14 years. It is a little bit unfair that 🕴 still not be well known. Personally speaking, this funny plus a little bit weird and creepy emoji is one of my favorite emoji, I hope more people knew about the background of 🕴 and even became interested in it.

Hope you enjoy this blog post! If you have other emojis you would like us to do research, please let us know in the comment below🤗.

Search recents Recents No recent use emoji Emojify... Emojify Success