Skip to main content

To Emoji or not to Emoji 🍩


Friends,
In this era of digital communication, the growing cast of available emoji seems a convenient and fun way to enrich your message. The plethora of colorful options lends your communication a palette unavailable to classic writers. Use them to reduce your keystrokes (a lion image 🦁instead of the word "lion"), add emphasis (balloons, streamers and a cake after "happy birthday" 🎈🎊🎂), or convey emotion (choose a happy face among the dozens of options 😳). Lately I've been pondering the hidden pitfalls behind these seemingly harmless characters. I loften use humor when communicating and tend to be liberal with the range of meanings I ascribe to any given icon. I assume people will get my drift and, if they don't, no harm done. Right? Maybe. Maybe my lack of guile and hipness blinds me to inadvertent double entendre (or, worse, insult). What if there is a secret thesaurus people use to decrypt the hidden meaning in these pictures? Is one smiley face more appropriate than another for a given circumstance 🤨🧐? Does the color of the heart I chose to signal appreciation mean something specific 💛💙❤️? Does replacing a heart with a peach send the wrong message 🍑? (this heart shaped fruit was in my recently used emoji due to my año viejo effigy, and I may have subsequently used them interchangeably).

I suppose that's a chance you take, particularly when delving into humor. There is only so much mind reading you can expect from your audience. We all have our own background, perspective and baggage. Hopefully you know me well enough to see through any miscommunication and know I meant well. Then again, maybe I should refrain from their use altogether. I have mixed emotions over emoticons and my cognitive dissonance makes me feel like I have a double-standard. On one hand I have convinced myself I'm clever and my emoji use is hilarious. On the other hand, I find a response with three teary-eyed smiley faces both irking and loathsome (whoever designed that emoji should be summarily shot 😂😂😂). Maybe I should stick to safe emoji like the donut. It's sweet, simple and leaves no room for misinterpretation. Or not.

Happy Friday!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Donut Doodle Dandy

Dear Members and Constituents, In trying to figure-out Wednesday’s cool-looking Google Doodle ( Jorge Luis Borges’ 112 th birthday ), I stumbled across a list of Google Doodles you’ll never see. This, and a Rockies game later that day, were sufficient inspiration to get my head spinning around what other doodles Google might never noodle? I’m sure you’ll probably have a few ideas of your own, but I was able to come-up with a couple. How about a former Colorado Rockies player whose unfortunate encounter with a moth put him in the news this week? The Matt Holliday doodle might look something like this… Another item which, surprisingly enough, has not been made into a doodle are donuts. Although I was slightly taken aback to find this delicious pastry has not been featured, after the initial disappointment, I decided to take matters into my own hands and take a stab at one (perhaps Google can use it next year for national donut day )… or to celebrate Greek police having “ blown a ho...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Dozen Rules to Live By

Friends, When it comes to the big questions, there are far too many platitudes, truisms, cliches and BS. Bookshelves are lined with so much advice, you’d think we would have answered them all by now. So, why do people keep doing it? I couldn’t tell you. Whatever the reason, here’s one more exploration to add to the interminable list. I’ve left God out of this post, so these “rules” should come in handy whether you believe life has meaning, or you think purpose is just our prefrontal cortex’s way of sabotaging our limbic system. And, since donuts come in dozens, it felt fitting that my list just happens to have twelve rules.   Do it! (what are you waiting for?). Life sometimes feels like a dress rehearsal. So much time spent preparing for the future, there’s little time left to actually live life. Habit, routine and inertia have a way of filling the day. Try something new, who knows, you might enjoy it. Don’t overthink it. But, what to do? Give-in to a...
2 comments
Read more

Enchanted Donuts

Friends, Mix equal doses of isolation, adaptation, and time. Add a pinch of random stowaway life forms. Remove predators. The result? An eclectic collection of surprising plants and animals known as the Galápagos Islands. Here, iguanas swim and dive for food, the largest members of the sunflower family grow into 45 foot tall trees, and boulder-sized tortoises blow past the century mark with ease. Frigatebird throats of red, boobie feet of blue, moth-pollinated flowers of white. And, having been granted constitutional rights , sea lions own most park benches in town. Surrounded by an ocean teeming with fish of all shapes and sizes, the only downside of spending time in this remote Ecuadorian province appears to be the complete absence of donut shops. I suppose I too can adapt.  Happy Friday!
Post a Comment
Read more