The basic smile emote is one of the original and oldest emotes on Twitch, holding the distinction of emote ID 1. As a simple smile, it is part of the first set of 14 emotes on Twitch. These early emotes were adapted from standard emoticons and included expressions like :), :D, :O, <3, :/ and others. Among these, emote ID 9 is unique for being the default heart.

These initial emotes were designed to facilitate basic, friendly interactions within the Twitch community, embodying the platform's early focus on simple, universal expressions of emotion.