Don’t put on a happy face! Are you using the smiley emoji all wrong?
Name: The smiley face emoji.
Appearance: A bland, benign smile on a yellow background.
Meaning: Colossally insulting in every conceivable way.
What? But it’s just a friendly smile. No it isn’t. The smiley face emoji is a weapon of sheer blunt-force trauma. Nothing says “I hate you” more than a smiley face emoji.
But … but … why? It’s a tool of passive aggression and dismissiveness. A smiley face emoji at the end of a message is a patronising pat on the head from somebody who wishes you nothing but ill fortune.
I use it all the time. Then you’re a monster.
It’s nice and happy. Let me ask you a question: how old are you?
For the sake of argument, let’s say early 30s. Oh, that’s why. You’re a boomer.
No! I’m a millennial! I’m cool! I wear skinny jeans and side-part my hair. I know which Harry Potter house I’m in. I’m sorry, old-timer. I can’t hear you over your Glenn Miller music and the sound of your walk-in bath filling up.
I see. You must be gen Z. I am. And I have no option but to declare you my sworn enemy. But we’re almost the same age. It’s still enough to draw a line in the sand. This intergenerational miscommunication was recently reported on by the Wall Street Journal, citing all manner of young people who feel affronted by what they declare is an unforgivably sincere use of the smiley face.
But I like using the smiley face sincerely! Get with the programme, you fossil. Meanings change. Sure, emojis might have been created to signify intended tone in a predominately textbased communication system, but now things have evolved. We only use the smiley face emoji sarcastically now. Everyone knows that.
So what emoji do you use to express happiness? The skull-and-crossbones or skull emoji. It means: “I’m dead” or, in boomer speak: “That’s so funny”.
Seems excessive. Shows what you know. Anyway, the yellow smiley face has become a symbol of unbridled consumerism. It was invented in 1963 as a cheap way to improve the morale of State Mutual Life Assurance Company workers, then licensed to a company that, by 2017, was making £300m from it annually. It’s gross.
But it’s been subverted. It was used in Watchmen and Nirvana inverted the colours and made it look inebriated. It became an icon of acid house. So it was so uncool that people went out of their way to change its meaning?
Yes. And now you use it to tell acquaintances that you enjoyed looking at their baby pictures on Facebook?
OK, fine, I’ll just start using the skull-and-crossbones emoji when I’m happy. What? No. Yuck. Stop trying to be cool and young.
Do say: “Emojis are sarcastic now, keep up.”
Don’t say: “But the aubergine emoji is still OK, right?”