The Neutral Face can have many uses in different scenarios. One area where this emoji really shines is when trying to decide on something and you are feeling rather “meh” about the suggestions. Your friend suggests lunch somewhere but you don’t feel that excited to eat that particular type of food; you could respond with the face alone to show that you aren’t excited, nor displeased with the suggestion. This face can also be used as a good way to halt a conversation; let’s say someone starts a chat with you but it’s been a long day and you were looking forward to that Netflix binging session. If the said conversation enthusiast isn’t deterred by a few polite words - then the emoji by itself should get your message across.

Neutral face was approved as part of Unicode 6.0 and added to Emoji 1.0 - this was the update that saw other popular neutral emojis like Expressionless Face and Face Without Mouth.