Secret Codes on Instagram Notes are the newest way of declaring your love

The way young people communicate love nowadays can sometimes feel antonymic to romance. Sliding into someone’s DMs or subtly reacting to someone’s story with an emoji aren’t precisely the butterfly-inducing acts we grew up associating with pursuing a crush. 

However, a new digital language has emerged to communicate who their love interests are through Instagram notes cryptically. 

Notes are a feature introduced by the app at the end of 2022. Through it, users can now share updates – from a mundane thought to an important life update – to their followers, with a 60-character limit and using only text and emojis. Secret Codes have emerged within the feature and have quickly become popularized. In fact, since the 5th of April 2023, there have already been over 1.3m uses of these letter codes. Each cryptic numerical code represents the first initial of a name, and their primary use has been to drop a hint to love interests. 

While secret codes may not be able to replace love letters, it’s refreshing to see innovative ways romantic gestures persist in the digital age. It’ll be exciting to see how many future couples can say they first connected through this trend. 

If you’d like to try out secret codes, here’s a list of all of them:

o22 = A

o76 = B

o99 = C 

o12 = D  

o43 = E 

o98 = F

o24 = G  

o34 = H 

o66 = I 

o45 = J 

o54 = K 

o84 = L 

o33 = M 

o12 = N

o89 = O 

o29 = P 

o38 = Q 

o56 = R  

o23 = S

o65 = T  

o41 = U  

o74 = V 

o77 = W 

o39 = X 

o26 = Y 

o10 = Z

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