If you are used to using WhatsApp, there is a good chance that you will receive this strange code soon.
We rub shoulders with her every day but we often forget how she changed our societies and their way of communicating. The arrival of the Internet and social networks allowed a new form of language and writing to emerge. In addition to the emojis that has become omnipresent in written messages, some more complex codes regularly appear in SMS, on Facebook, Instagram, X or even Whatsapp. One of these coded messages appeared recently within the Meta application. If he is already starting to be shared all over the world, he leaves many users in doubt as to his meaning.
You may have already seen it in one of your discussion spaces, the “233333” begins to spread in the United States, in Europe, and in particular in Spain or Germany, in messages exchanged with friends or loved ones. If he has not yet arrived in your WhatsApp conversations, it could well appear very quickly, without you really understanding its meaning. And this is quite normal: this is a small coded message, in which a “2” followed by a certain number of “3” replaces an expression that we have used to use for years now.
The origin of the “233333” is quite distant, since the habit was initially taken in China by the young generations. Its meaning is not very complicated, however. It even refers to the good old “hahaha” or to the “lol” (“Laughing out loud” or “I laugh out of bursts”) that a large majority of young people used in the early 2000s. The more the number of 3 is important after the 2, the more frank the fun and the more the person in front is folded in half.
The origin of the “233333” dates back several years in China and would have appeared for the first time on a discussion forum called MOP, created in 1997, where users quickly grabbed this figure as a new way of expressing their joy and laughter. Basically, the “233” code allowed these Chinese users to display a smiley laughing. Over the years, this code has entered the daily life of young Chinese people and it is now used on multiple applications like WeChat or QQ, instant messaging close to WhatsApp for us.
The use of many 3 at the end of the code can be similar to the number of “ha” or “o” that can be used when writing “loool”, to indicate to the interlocutor how fun the situation. Concretely, if you receive a “233333” via WhatsApp, there is therefore no need to worry or react other than by another friendly message, since that expresses nothing other than a frank and spontaneous laugh.