Emotes are income, not cosmetics
Filming a player performing an emote adds Content Value. That makes emotes one of the few purchases in the game that pays for itself — and because objects can only be scored once per day, a new emote is a fresh daily scoring slot that cannot be exhausted by filming the same radio twice.
They are also the only purchasable items that cannot be found in the Old World. Everything else you can loot; emotes you have to buy.
The one-at-a-time rule
Two mechanics decide whether emotes are worth buying.
You can only hold one emote at a time. Using a second emote makes you forget the first. That sounds like a hard limit, and it is — but not a permanent one, because emote books stay on the table and can be used again later. The book is the purchase; the emote slot is the loadout.
Emotes carry over to new saves. Books persist and remain available across saves, so this is a permanent unlock rather than a per-run buy. Spending $3,800 on the complete set is not throwing money away when the set stays with you.
The practical loop: buy a book, learn the emote, film a teammate performing it, then switch to whichever emote you want next. There is no reason to hold back a purchase you have already made.
All 16 purchasable emotes
| Emote | Price |
|---|---|
| Caring | $50 |
| Ancient Gestures 3 | $80 |
| Applause | $100 |
| Workout 1 | $100 |
| Ancient Gestures 2 | $100 |
| Confused | $120 |
| Dance 103 | $150 |
| Dance 102 | $200 |
| Dance 101 | $250 |
| Yoga | $250 |
| Backflip | $300 |
| Workout 2 | $350 |
| Gymnastics | $400 |
| Thumbnail 1 | $400 |
| Thumbnail 2 | $450 |
| Ancient Gestures 1 | $500 |
The full set costs $3,800.
The 17th emote
Dance 104 is not purchasable. It is the reward for accepting the TokTok sponsorship, which makes it the only emote tied to the sponsorship system rather than the shop.
What to buy first if you are not buying everything
Price and utility do not line up here, because every emote produces the same kind of Content Value — the differences are in the animation, not the payout. That makes the cheap end strictly better value.
- Caring ($50) — the cheapest daily scoring slot in the game.
- Ancient Gestures 3 ($80) — second cheapest, same job.
- Applause / Workout 1 / Ancient Gestures 2 ($100 each) — three more slots for the price of one Backflip.
- Dance 101 or Yoga ($250) — pick by longer animation rather than price; a longer emote is easier to film for the full 9-second window.
- Backflip ($300) — the most-searched emote, and genuinely useful because the animation is long and reads well on camera.
- The $400–$500 tier last. Gymnastics, Thumbnail 1, Thumbnail 2 and Ancient Gestures 1 cost more than the first five combined and add no extra value.
If you are buying everything anyway, the order barely matters — only the total does.
How emotes fit the daily scoring cycle
Content Value rules separate subjects into two groups:
- Enemies — every individual spawn can be scored
- Objects, emotes and player actions — score once per day
That second rule is why a shelf of emotes is worth more than a shelf of objects. Each emote is a distinct subject that scores once per day, and you control how many you own. A team of four, each holding a different emote, has four daily scoring slots that no amount of Old World looting can replace.
The corollary: do not burn film re-filming an emote you already scored that day. Film each one once, at about 9 seconds, with the player filling the frame.
Related guides
- Content Warning Views Guide — Content Value, the 9-second rule and every subject’s value
- Content Warning Recording Guide — the 90-second film roll and the extraction box
- Content Warning Items Database — every item with its spawn rarity
- Content Warning Co-op Guide — running a group so the filming slots are covered
- Content Warning Hub — all guides for this game