Over the course of the last decade or so, popular communication technology has been evolving toward text-based communication instead of more traditional voice communication. This shouldn’t be a surprise for anybody. And if it is, maybe you should be getting out more often. Texting is one of the most popular forms of communication, with almost 3/4 of cellular subscribers signed up for text messaging services. Cell phones, which used to do little more than make calls, are now used primarily for sending text messages. Texting is overwhelmingly popular within our particular demographic. Its convenience lends itself naturally to a social microcosm obsessed with constant communication, like college campuses.
But all this convenience doesn’t come without a cost. The brevity and ease of use that makes texting so popular sacrifice the kind of basic subtlety that facilitates face-to-face, or even voice-to-voice, communication.
You know it has happened to you before. You get a text message from a friend and, no matter how many times you read it, you just don’t get what your friend is trying to say. Or maybe they were making a sarcastic joke that just didn’t come across in the text message.
There simply aren’t enough characters in a standard text message to convey the humorous undertones that would have been communicated by a speaker’s tone of voice, facial expressions or body language.
For those of us more inclined to humor that relies heavily on subtlety, this can be a huge problem. But what can you do? Until recently, the only recourse a troubled texter had was rephrasing their message or simply not making the joke at all.
There have been some attempts to create punctuation marks that might alleviate this problem.
One of these was the “SarcMark,” a symbol that initially required specialized software to use and was ultimately rendered in Unicode so that it could be used with ease in word processing programs.
The problem with the SarcMark was that nobody knew what it was or how to use it. The software was complicated to install and, even if a user went to the effort of installing the software, it wasn’t guaranteed that the recipient would know what it was.
Enter, Emojis.
Especially popular among iPhone users, Emojis are small images that can be added to text messages to spice things up a bit. Although not brand new, Emojis have grown significantly in popularity over the past year. There’s a face for every emotion imaginable, as well as Emojis for a wide range of inanimate objects ranging from food to weapons.
While they may have been invented as a novelty item, it appears that Emojis are beginning to serve a much more important purpose in communication than mere entertainment. The broad spectrum of facial expressions is now enabling texters to communicate more precisely the subtle emotions that were previously lost in text messaging.
Are you making a joke that you’re afraid the recipient might miss? Stick a grinning or laughing Emoji face at the end of your message to make sure the recipient knows you’re joking.
Trying to be flirty? There are at least four different winky faces you can use, depending on just how flirty you’re trying to be.
It has gotten to the point where it is possible to conduct an entire conversation using nothing but various Emojis.
Emojis are so successful for a few reasons. Firstly, they’re cute. Damned cute, at that. How could you not want to use them?
Secondly, they’re easy to use. This was the SarcMark’s big downfall – nobody knew how to use it. Emojis, which, on the iPhone, were initially an app package that had to be installed, now come standard and can be enabled with ease.
The touch of a button opens up a vast library of Emojis. Finally, they’re popular. They’re popular mostly (well, almost entirely) because of their cuteness, which then enables them to serve their purpose as a communication aid.
Technology has evolved to the point that we can communicate almost as seamlessly across the airwaves as we might if we were doing it in person.
The implications of this are huge, especially when one considers that cell phones as we know them are only two decades old.
While I don’t know where this technology is going, I can say for certain that it is a huge change from whence we came.
Editorials Co-Editor Nicholas Bradley is a College sophomore from Skillman, N.J.
The Emory Wheel was founded in 1919 and is currently the only independent, student-run newspaper of Emory University. The Wheel publishes weekly on Wednesdays during the academic year, except during University holidays and scheduled publication intermissions.
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