They say pictures speak a thousand words. Sure they do. Then, how many words does an emoji describe? Oh, let’s not keep a count of that. From saying a simple hello to a heart whelming proposal, emojis do it all. They are there in every blink of an eye. They have found and settled a position in human life.
It is so easy and fun too, to say everything out of emojis. “Who needs to type so many letters when I can simply put up a kissing smiley,” my niece told me the other day. A four-year-old, who cannot type words, find it easier to express her feelings with these simple characters.
The word emoji comes from Japanese ‘e’ meaning ‘picture’ + ‘moji’ meaning ‘character’. Originating on Japanese mobile phones in 1999, emoji became immensely popular worldwide in the 2010s after being added to other mobile operating systems.
Now it is a part and parcel of everyday life and is considered a large part of the pop culture in the west. The Oxford dictionaries even named the ‘face with tears of joy emoji’ the word of the year.
Emojis are the first truly global form of communication. With more than a billion people being proficient in English, double the sum prefers using the internet and hence the emojis equipped in every smartphone with over 90 per cent of social media users maybe communicating via emojis on a daily basis.
The animation of these emojis is yet another cherry on the top. It just doesn’t show the image but makes it move and express emotions. The animated emojis on Gmail were quite a rage when they were launched. Emojis in the form of GIFs are something everyone is swooned over by. I myself found it quite interesting putting up stories on Instagram when I got to know about this feature wherein I can add a GIF to my story.
This is an example of what animation can do and it has already done! Starting from the basic emoticons to 2D emojis, now the social media is flooded with 3D animated emojis. It took us all by a single click and now that’s what spams our smartphones every day. So much so, that Sony Pictures Animation even created an animated feature about the same. The feature aptly shows the life of emojis if it would have been real.
It’s fun to see the new smartphone generation (our moms and dads) use the emojis with caution and curiosity. Wanting to understand the meaning behind all, for one wrong mistake in the many groups they have can create a blunder, making them the joke of the day!
Though many emojis are yet misunderstood as it is difficult for the viewer to interpret the actual emotions behind them as the receiver wants them to be perceived, it is still the most loving way of communication, making our lives simpler.
On this World Emoji Day, making the emojis one amongst us and accepting them as an essential part of our language, with the social media all flooded with them, let’s keep wondering, what’s next!
