Emotion Is the Main Topic – the Emojicalypse :-)

A film about emoticons and their ubiquitous descendants, emojis, explores the question of where the revolution of small emotion signs is leading and how images are changing our culture.

By Thomas Wagner

Great emotions packed into simple pictorial characters: Circular smiley faces that wink, smirk, cry, grimace, or stick out their tongues. Hearts of various colours, red lips, multiple hand signs, fruit, food, animals, and an almost infinite number of other symbols. Emojis have dominated electronic communication since their debut in Japan in the 1990s. Without a sign for a gesture, a smiley greeting, or a nice gesture of comfort, no chat, text message, or email is complete.

For Erik Spiekermann, the country’s typography pope, the issue is simple: “I believe that emojis make communication neither simpler nor more complex, but simply dumber.” Or, as Gala Rebane, a digital culture expert, asserts, is the competent use of emojis, on the contrary, “high art”? Are emojis a return to the Stone Age or the era of Egyptian hieroglyphics? What are the misunderstandings caused by the use of colourful pictorial symbols? Who creates them, and who decides what they mean? Who do emojis include and exclude? Are they neo-colonialist and propagate a Western viewpoint?

From Emoticons to Kimojis

Lilly Schlagnitweit explains the most diverse aspects of the little pictorial characters in her film, which is as informative as it is thought-provoking – be it the precursors of emojis, emoticons that originated as a creative game with punctuation marks, alternative designs, inside jokes (like a chair emoji on TikTok instead of the laugh emoji) or celebrity emojis. It is estimated that over 3500 emoticons exist. It is said that 92% of all internet users worldwide use emotion symbols, with many returning to their favourite emojis repeatedly.

It’s no surprise that “stars” like Kim Kardashian like to play along here and offer their own “kimojis” in these times of hysterical attention economy and ubiquitous labelling. How could it be otherwise in this instance, where hearts and donuts refer to herself and her sexualised body? (When it first became available in late 2015, the app was downloaded 9,000 times per second and made $1 million per minute. The Kimoji brand led to a merchandise campaign, and other celebrities such as Justin Bieber quickly followed suit (Hillary Clinton even released “Hillarymojis”).

19-Sep-82 11:44 Scott E Fahlman :-)
From: Scott E Fahlman .
I suggest the following string to indicate banter:
:-)
Read it sideways. Actually, with the current trend, it's
probably more rational to mark things that are NOT jokes.
Use for this
:-(

Substitute of Non-Verbal Communication

Digital representatives of non-verbal communication or striking exaggerations? © HiClipart

But how do emoticons work? How do they appear in text? According to the unsurprising theory, emojis are the digital representatives of nonverbal communication, as they clarify statements such as gestures and facial expressions. But don’t emojis (like the face with big tears of laughter) depend on dramatic exaggerations? Is it a artificial body language that differs too much from patterns used in direct interpersonal contact? Are the emotions communicated in this manner fake and easy to misuse for specific purposes? Emojis, according to the film, are not the root of all digital evil, but rather a part of the issue when it comes to learning what a facial expression means in direct communication. The emotion placeholders appear in many situations throughout the film, demonstrating how associative, subjective, and random, if not arbitrary, the emotion comments can appear.

Barrier-Free and Culturally Neutral?

The film additionally addresses the accessibility issue. Emojis are particularly confusing when they are used in a completely different way, according to a young person “who otherwise has no idea about such emojis,” such as her grandparents. Nonetheless, emojis perform better in terms of usability than, say, GIFs. Blind and other people with disabilities have been represented on the emoji keyboard since 2019. Furthermore, in recent years, the range has been extended to include various skin colours and relationship constellations, up to and including a pregnant man, to make it more diverse.

An Imbalance in the Cultural Representation

In terms of cultural representation, Ivorian graphic designer O’Plérou Grebet sees an imbalance: most emojis, he claims, portray “the West.” Then there are a few about Japan, because the emojis originate from there: “But all the rest represent Western culture”. Grebet attempts to shift the balance slightly. For a year, he posted an emoji on Instagram every day to attract attention to African cultures. Two have made it into the Unicode standard: one for “pouring liquid” and the lucky and protective symbol “hamsa”. (The others can be downloaded in an app). Lilian Stolk, an artist and historian, has also created her own emojis, particularly those that have been frequently rejected by Unicode for being political, such as a climate change emoji.

A brave new world? Newspeak in the format of an emotionalized micro-image? Reinterpreting emojis definitely has subversive possibilities. Menstruation, sex, and politics, on the other hand, can be written about in a much more differentiated manner in verbal language. Even if intended subversively, an emoji only marks an issue and only briefly discusses and questions it. Even if, when spoken in China, the mixture of two emojis (rice + rabbit) sounds like Mee Too.

Is It Creative to Choose an Emoji?

At the end, it is questioned how much room there is for creativity if emojis can be used and reinterpreted but have been defined beforehand. The fact that an artist uses emojis to make detailed portraits is merely a joke. Like an emoji Bible that wants to use stickers to awaken emotions for the Psalms and the New Testament. The sentence “A competent handling of emojis is also high art” appears again. It is not obvious that “everyone who can simply type something on the keyboard or select emojis also uses them skillfully.” “What is creative about clicking on something?” says Erik Spiekermann. It’s work, but it’s not intellectual achievement: “Any monkey can do that, type on a screen.”

For a long time, the commercialization of culture has been ongoing: What will communication look like in the metaverse? Will emojis of the future appear in virtual reality glasses and represent our mood? Will there be even more variation or even more manipulation? What about written culture, then? The film consequently concludes with the question, “With which emoji would you respond?”

Mehr auf ndion

More reviews and further articles on the topics of brands and design.

Share this page on social media: