I genuinely do not know, but I keep running into that, where they just use the crying emoji and they tell me it means they're laughing so hard they cried (not literally of course but w/e)... even though there actually is a laughing-crying emoji.

I'm going to yell at clouds tiktok, its probably cloud's tiktok's fault, somehow.

EDIT:

like, I tell a joke, they respond with a crying emoji, I am confused and apologetic because I think I hurt their feelings and they are just sad crying... nope.

Nope they actually liked the joke.

This has happened to me a number of times in the last 6-9 months, with different people.