Gone are
the days when you had to wait for (what seemed like) ages in the hallways of
your school/college and wait for your crush to come out of her class so you
could nervously ask her out to a cup of coffee-and make a stuttering, squeaking
fool of yourself. These days, a simple “coffee cup” emoji and a question mark
will suffice. Communication through symbols has been around for ages, and the
arrival of modern communication technology has put a refreshing new twist in
its. Although the picture-like emoji system is fairly new to the world, it
would be unfair to not learn about its humble keyboard-based predecessor-the
emoticon.
The first
widely accepted and documented use of an emoticon was by American computer
scientist Scott. E. Fahlman on September 18th, 1982 when he said on
an online message board that “:-)” could denote a humorous post while “:-(”
could denote a serious one. This seemed to click with the users of the message
board, who soon spread it wider. Lo and Behold! The entire world was sending
smileys to each other!
The nineties
fostered a new change in the form of mobile communication. People could now
call and text each other, and the little keypads on the phones let the users
send emoticons to each other. Enthusiastic users even used symbols and text
from other languages to make up specific “text faces” to portray their feelings
in a fun way, such as the table flip and the lenny face. Of course, emoticons
were met with disdain too; some people found it “too lazy” and “too
unprofessional”. A corporate study even showed that employees thought using
emoticons in an email would reduce the credibility or the gravity of the
content that they sent with it. Imagine losing credibility for showing how you
feel!
Rapid
development in mobile technology led to better graphics, more expansive
character support, touch screens and mass messaging/social networks. Enter
emoji- a part Japanese, part American creation that involved cartoon-like
symbols to denote expressions, faces and things, ranging from a simple smiley
to aliens and skulls. The emoji culture has massively impacted pop culture,
leading to merchandise, songs and even a widely criticized movie. Emojis have
effectively furthered the purpose of its predecessor by reducing the number of
characters needed to send a message and to make communication fun and
colourful, just like reading a book with pictures makes it more engaging. Apple
launched its own collection of emojis while Google already had its own
collection. Independent manufacturers like LG and Samsung came out with their
own ones too!
Emojis have
been in constant development ever since, and new symbols come out with every
update. Of course, modern progressive/woke culture has had its effect on emojis
also, maybe for the better too, since emojis have become significantly more
culturally inclusive and gender-unbiased. In fact, a recent court ruling even
made corporations remove the “pistol” emoji from their rosters, replacing it
with a water-gun. Take that, gun violence! Former US president Barack Obama was
even quoted thanking the Japanese for, among other things, emoji. Small symbols
and icons have had a humongous impact on the way people interact. Emojis have
made it easier for abused teens to come out to concerned authorities about
their abuse, for resistance movements and protestors around the world to
coordinate their movements, and for quick and easy communication (of course,
including the occasional “Will you go out with me?”)
Like
emoticons, emojis too have had their fair share of criticism, much along the
same lines as their predecessor. Some puritans are of the belief that using
such symbols ruins the “sanctity” of the language by not letting users use the
actual words to describe what they want to say. However, others disagree and
say that this is a normal event in the course of overall development of a
language. What started out with proud cavemen drawing pictures of their hunting
exploits on cave walls moved on to the eloquent use of ancient scripts, to more
primitive versions of today’s languages, to what may be considered extremely
old-fashioned and maybe even politically unacceptable in today’s world…finally
to the language we use today. If it involves using emoji and emoticons, so be
it! “Dude”, for example was a word used to describe a dumb person in the 1880s,
but look at us now, using it freely as if it were nothing! In the same way,
racial terms and slurs were used against people of certain races, which are
pretty much unacceptable today. Of course language evolves! There might come a
day when evry1 talks lyk dis bcoz it pretty mch bcms da norm (of course I won’t
like that, and neither would you!) What harm can a few innocent symbols and
characters do?
-Arihant
Pretty interesting story :)
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