Unless you are living in a cave, you would already have heard of animoji or ‘’The Emoji Movie”. Inspired by manga art and kanji characters, Shigetaka Kurita invented emojis and communications have become more exciting than ever. Don’t believe me? World Emoji Day happens on 17 July every year. Most of us would have applied pictographs of faces, objects and symbols in our daily exchanges of ideas with people or content creation. Are any of these Top 10 emojis one of your guilty pleasures?
There have been conversations of all sorts on “official” usage. People tend to sprinkle 🤓 and 👍 sparingly on business correspondences for fear of being seen as emotional, frivolous or incompetent. This mode of expression actually makes one feel accomplished and helps diffuse tense situations when done right. By keeping the email message simple and tone positive, emojis on subject lines can increase open rates too.
Emojis by default are yellow because of coding. Colored versions of the same emoji are interpreted differently. For example 💚 that you sent out to or receive is likely for or from acquaintances and, a representation of soulmate or twin flame if 🖤. The same thing means different things to individuals too, revealed by Science of People. To the Gen Zs, 🙂 indicate passive aggression. 🤣 are for boomers. Apparently 💀 or 😭 are popular replacements to convey laughter, seemingly more unique and dramatic. In case you are one of those who don’t use emojis in texts, this creative lot will think that either you are significantly older or they have to act extremely professional at work. If you understood what 👁️👄👁️ means, hey you must have jumped on the Tik Tok bandwagon!
Several brands used emojis on social media to gauge public sentiments, click throughs or conversions and add them to pictures to become stickers. A South Korean messaging app, Line’s decision to monetize stickers some 8 years ago was a strategic one. It now has merchandises ranging from fashion to electronics that features Line Friends characters, made available in retail stores from New York to Shanghai! Emoji marketing works well with the younger audiences. Drake’s 12-emoji album cover art has since intrigued fans to join in and produce their own rendition. WWF India came out with 17 #SadEmojis of endangered animals to raise awareness of wildlife trafficking.
Youtube has recently introduced emoji cards to provide moral boosts when content creators reach certain milestones for number of views, subscribers and hours of watch time. Facebook sound designers recently added associated sound effects to these visual cues and called them soundmojis. #ICYMI, emoji reactions will be made available on Twitter for a limited period in Turkey and none of them will be negative.
Emoji combines the Japanese words for “picture” and “letters.” They save us time, boost engagement, convey the unspoken and instill colorful personalities. Will the world one day only speak emojis and eventually come to be a brand new language? I hope not. Nothing beats face-to-face contacts or written words still. Emojis either reinforce understanding or get lost in translation. Do you agree or disagree?
p.s: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ is an emoticon (not emoji). I just wanna see if you are a millennial and / or have reached the bottom of this article. 🧍♀️🧍♀️🧍♀️
