An emoji for your thoughts as we speak

This year we’re going to see more emojis added to the esteemed pantheon of non-wordy characters that have become so essential to the way we communicate. Which ones are your poison?

So, imagine you’re on WhatsApp — ‘online’, by all counts, web log in or not. In a chat window, you’ve typed something (you think is) funny or poignant or whatever, and to drive home the point (to whoever you’re texting), you want to add an appropriate emoji, but you can’t find it. You keep scrolling, keep scrolling, flick flick, right to left, but the perfect emoji never appears. Time is lost. You don’t want to try too hard. So you end up using that green turtle, which is fine, and unexpected, therefore funny. Logic be damned.

My point is, there should be a word for this lowgrade-repeat annoyance-turned into a lemonade-from-lemons kind of situation. Ideally, that word should be in Japanese. That would be neat. It could tie in with the fact that “Emoji were invented in the late 90s by Shigetaka Kurita...” I only know that because — reporter research? Scoff, no silly! insert purple devil emoji;— because my globetrotter colleague Sujata sent a picture of that description from an emoji exhibition from a museum in London that she recently visited.

Now, to be clear, I like emojis. Years ago, when my loyalties still lay with emoticons — :) — I thought emojis objectionable, a testimony that the boors were having their way, inflicting their horrendous taste on the rest of mankind — on us!— hurting us self-proclaimed aesthetes of delicate sensibilites, pinky up and all. But. Well. Pick your battles, they say. And I do think they’ve gotten better, the emojis.

Subtlety has entered the world of textual expression. We now have eye rolls! Yaay! Come on, you love the eye roll. And smirky-smileys! Choice isn’t restricted to thatdelirious yellow face with the happy tears shooting out diagonally, which is apparently the world’s most used emoji, one that people love to use as much as they love to declare of every mundane development, “that’s amazing!” The proper name of that emoji is ‘face with tears of joy’.

Last week, I was most taken in by the gif Tim Cook tweeted, following the World Emoji Day emoji overdrive, revealing what’s to come this year from Apple. The reveal was a bunch of new emojis: a sandwich, for one (as if we need more virtual food; a coffee mug though would be nice), a hijab-wearing woman — great!, some zombie creatures, a T-rex (neither of which I see myself using), a meditating man, etc. The one that I’m most chuffed about is the mad face, the one with eyeballs all over the place, and tongue sticking out, like a dog smelling the ocean from a car window for the first time. Insanely good emoji, IMHO. I’m thinking of the future when I can bombard WhatsApp conversations, even groups — work and family — with this one. I’m calling it the mad dog. And waiting for all hell to break loose, at least with the ironic users of emoji.

I was asking some people about their favourite emoji. Got some predictable responses — everyone likes the happy faces. No one’s heard of the man in a business suit levitating. And I am the only person I know who uses ‘person fencing’ emoji to denote a feat accomplished.

I learnt some other stuff. Like, I had a vague notion of this, but I discovered only now that emoji appear different, depending on the platforms people use. In looking for some official writ-in-stone type stuff, I stumbled on this research paper “Blissfully happy” or “ready to fight”: varying interpretations of Emoji from the University of Minnesota. The authors (sorry guys, too many of you to mention!) there’s a bit about how while we’re using one emoji, it’s entirely possible that people could construe it’s meaning quite differently for how the emoji appears on their devices. As in, I send a shy face, you get a gleeful one. Like that. And if everyone was misfiring and misreading emoji, the world would overnight be infinitely more interesting. But, anyway.

You see, there are apparently 17 different platforms for each emoji (Apple, Google, Microsoft, Blackberry, Samsung, LG, etc). And on each of these platforms, emoji appear different — a little cuter, a little uglier, a little more exaggerated, a little too yellow, what is going on with those lips on that face! etc, etc.

And you can’t be expected to know what all those vague emoji flying about stand for. But here’s the thing: did you know — gasp — you could look it up?! One light bulb emoji right here, please!

There’s a Holy Grail online called Emojipedia — didn’t know this. It’s an online reference for emoji meanings. I went to it rightaway and looked up random emoji that have been grating (on?/for?) me. Those symbols on iOS, for one. You know, those purple blocks, hitherto meaningless? I had

to go figure. And so, the day’s learnings include: “Ophiuchus is used by some as a 13th sign in the Zodiac. The symbol for ophiuchus appears a U shape with a wavy line through it. Ophiuchus was approved as part of Unicode 6.0 in 2010 and added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015”; My question though, who is this person who ever needs to use this off-his-chusis??

The Minnesota research paper then turns hardcore, with graphs of yellow smiling faces and such like, captioned with ominous one liners: “across platform sentiment misconstrual scores grouped by Unicode.” Say what?

Basically, the sensible researchers have laid out the problem of misunderstanding emojis. Go read it. Short version: like I said, I could send you what I think is a hands-folded namaste emoji and you could infer from that an apology. On those lines, anyway — many a slip between the cup and blue ticks.

The most curious tidbit I picked up in learning about emoji was that you can’t get rid of them. Lice! As in, you can’t throw them out of the canon. There’s no expelling the dozen (rubbish, in my view) cityscape emoji. Even phones get obsolete and they stop being manufactured. Emoji? They just stay immortal. It’s like a government of India job. Once you’re in, you’re in. Which is why I’m saying, we need a word, for the endless rifling through for accurate emoji that are not findable no matter how much you flick left to right or top to bottom. Haven’t you ever eavesdropped on people mumbling: “Now where’s that Star of David when I need it!” Tsk.

Also, I have a question for the Chairperson of the Unicode Standard/ CEO of Emojipedia/ Mr Kurita: why, sir, do we need two magnifying glass emojis — one pointing left, the other, you know, right. Two magnifying glasses! Granted, a still more modest number than when you consider the emoji for trains (about 10) and notebooks (eight, excluding papers with curled edges, scrolls, newspapers). The mind, it boggles. One salmon pink squiggly brain emoji for me here please! Oh, but no existy.

And the too-detailed bento box isn’t pushing my buttons. Jeremy Burge, the founder of Emojipedia, told NPR, “There isn’t actually a way to remove an emoji — would you believe it? They’re part of this Unicode Standard. And the key part of that standard is that once it’s in, it’s in forever”. A song pairing, perhaps. Hit it, Celine! I will

always love youuuu! Oh god, no. Wait, wait. A better pairing… here, boy! <insert mad dog emoji>.

Subtlety has entered the world of textual expression. We now have eye rolls! Yaay! Come on, you love the eye roll. And smirky-smileys! Choice isn’t restricted to that delirious yellow face with the happy tears shooting out diagonally...