The Monkey Covering Eyes emoji is a visual way of saying “I don’t want to see it”. Due to the happy smiling mouth however, this emoji can be used in a variety of cheeky messaging scenarios. Most often, it’s used when someone describes an embarrassing situation and you would like to demonstrate just how cringeworthy the situation is. For example, let’s say one of your friends describe an embarrassing date - the kind of date where they are holding a whole tray of food and then slip over right at their date’s feet. Simply reacting with the See No Evil Monkey alone is enough to demonstrate your cringe. The emoji can also be used to react to something that is ugly but in a comedic and light hearted fashion. In this case, a friend might send you a picture of clothing they are planning on buying. You find it particularly horrible and you could react with a message like: No girl 🙈

Approved in Unicode 6.0, the See No Evil Monkey was added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015 - the other Monkey symbols were also added in this update.