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Emojis: The New Hieroglyphics
Have you ever had a conversation with someone that was pure emojis?
When I still had my flip phone, I’d receive messages from people that looked like this: □ □ □. On their end, they’d sent me a set of perfectly curated emojis, but since my flip phone couldn’t process emojis, I was left in the dark. “You are having some emotions,” I’d say, “but I can’t see what they are!”
Emojis are visual interpretations of our own facial expressions, but they’re also visual representations of EVERYTHING, from gorillas to sushi, from water polo players to wooden caskets. As I scroll through the many emojis available in Emoji Version 13.1, I must admit that I’m pretty shocked at the wide variety of images at my disposal —there’s even a fax machine, a cable car and an evil eye pendant (and a whole process for submitting your own emoji idea!).
Lately, I started noticing how much time I was spending to search for the perfect emoji to pair with my message. A perfectly placed kissy face, eggplant or sunflower can add a lot to a message, right?
If you’ve ever typed into a smartphone, an emoji will often pop up depending on what you type. If you choose to insert the image when the phone suggests it, you can send a message that reads “Right on 🎯” instead of “Right on target.” Right before our eyes, our verbal communication transforms into visual communication.
Emojis can be fun and festive! “Happy birthday” has now been elevated to include balloons, champagne, wrapped presents, party poppers, and a birthday cake filled with candles—a visual representation of a really fun party! But there are also emojis to represent an array of emotions, from the happiest (Smiling Face with Heart Eyes) to tougher emotions (Anxious Face with Sweat, Face Screaming in Fear, and Pleading Face).
I think that, during the pandemic, emojis have taken on even more significance in our communication. Without in-person interactions, a lot of our emoting happens virtually.
Have we as a society begun to lean on emojis to express emotions that may be difficult to express with words? And if so, is there anything wrong with that? Or are emojis helping by given us a medium by which to express complex emotions?
I have definitely developed an over-reliance on emojis ever since I got a smartphone. It simply feels unnatural to send a message that reads “Thank you” without adding the cursory 🙏 Folded Hands emoji. But why the need to always emphasize every message with an emoji? Are words not enough anymore?
I was in a nonviolent communication group and one of the things we talked about was the way that people (especially women) tend to say “I feel” when what they really mean is “I think.” We often choose to use “I feel” instead to soften whatever we are about to say, to diminish their punch somehow—and to make statements that are not about feelings at all.
I think that’s what’s happening with emojis, too. They’ve become like punctuation, emphasizing whatever it is we’re saying—or potentially lightening the austerity of plain and simple words. If we aren’t punctuating with an emoji, is our message truly heartfelt?
When I find myself scrolling through emojis for too long, looking for the perfect addendum to my message, I stop myself. Am I getting my point across with just words? If so, why am I hunting for emojis? To prove that I am hip, with it, and relevant—that I’m fluent in “emoji”? To make my message more palatable to the reader? What am I trying to achieve with an emoji that I can’t achieve with words unadorned by cute images?
There’s quite a bit of sadness within my friend circles these days, and I find myself composing difficult messages about loss, grief, and fear. It’s in these moments when I want to lean on emojis to carry the weight of the moment, to do the emotional work for me. Crying face. Broken heart. Hugging face. Sometimes, there truly are no words. In the absence of physical presence, we turn to emojis to do the thing that we would do in real life, which is simply be present to witness someone’s sadness. Even so, I am a woman of words, and I am trying my darndest to find the right ones.
Digital Life Around the Web
Writing about my over-reliance on emojis made me re-watch these hilarious videos about punctuating emails by gender scholar Liz Plank.
How the syringe emoji became the vaccine emoji! 💉💉💉
"We seem to be among the first people in history to be both in the midst of a global pandemic and also obliged to project an attractive image of ourselves to the outside world." (NYTimes)
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