The U.S.A. Today on line newspaper that I browse
regularly had a filler
of sort today that represents why culture today is headed downhill. It
was an emoji match game. That would be those crazy smiley faces and
other emotional responses some people use in place of real language. I
know it is a filler and has no effect on what is the news, but this
thing was on the front page of the U.S.A. newspaper. If you have time
to waste and are interested, here's the link to the "test".
http://www.usatoday.com/pages/interactives/emoji-match-game/
When playing the game you will read the following....."What does your
emoji use say about the country you live in — and what could your
country's emoji use say about you? A new study by Swift Key, a company
that develops mobile keyboards, analyzed more than a billion emoji used
by speakers of 16 languages around the world between October 2014 and
January 2015. See if you can predict the results."
My first observation is a question. Why would we want to know this?
Just thinking about the trivialization of language that such such
silliness has encouraged makes me want to make a sad emoji face. And
strangely, emoji's started in a place of education and culture, Japan.
That they spread all over the internet makes me have another sad emoji
expression when I think of Japan. The use of Emoji Icons has been so
prevalent that people don't think twice about sending these icons of
happy, angry or sad expressions. They just insert it in their messages
when most of the time, they aren't even really feeling that happy,
angry or sad.
Secondly, how am I suppose to react to a text message accompanied with
these icons? Does it matter? And why does the sender think I know the
meaning of those icons?
Those things should be a rarely used amusement, not a regularly used
irritant. There is a certain lack of sincerity I feel when someone uses
too many of them. A simple insertion of Emoji Icons can seem to be a
substitution for thought and feeling in the message. Emoji icons are
the reality TV of writing, cute but vapid and without substance. If the
cutsie "lol" and "brb" nonsense we first endured when chatting on line
were not bad enough, the emoji might be the death knell to
communication.
Finally, is the rise and popularity of the emoji reflective of the
decline in precision in our communication, both in writing and
verbally, or is it just a reflection of how lazy we have become? I vote
for both. Gee, I wish I could find an emoji that would illustrate that(imagine an emoji here).
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