Photo by Fausto García on Unsplash

I can still remember the first time I saw a smiley face. : ) I couldn’t understand it because it wasn’t a pictogram and it hadn’t arrived with an instruction manual – “tilt your head to the left.” All I could see was a colon and a parenthesis. I was failing at the one thing I normally did best: visualize. It could have been a mild form of dyslexia (which I may or may not have because I never got it diagnosed), but I blame it on the missing bits.

I was with a friend at the time and I had asked him to explain it to me. He obliged, but nonetheless mocked my poor observation skills, which ensued my aversion towards this alien language made up of punctuation marks. They were everywhere and I didn’t get them. When I finally did manage to commit some to memory, I incorporated them into my own texts – for I had found them necessary to relate to those who fired them in my direction – but I would still scratch my head at the arrival of a new specimen. Like <3. The whole of planet Earth saw a heart, I saw an arrow tip and a three.

Then came the full-fledged emoticons, which Yahoo famously pioneered in its once-very-popular Messenger platform. They were easier on my eyes and easier to relate to, but I dreaded that everyone abused them.

🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

“Technically,” I thought to  myself, “laughing so much would be fatal.”

Emojis didn’t do it for me either, but like Yahoo’s emoticons these were actual drawings of things, easy to ‘get’ on your first encounter with one. Thanks to the wonderful invention known as the smartphone, I can safely say I’ve fully embraced emojis and am no longer at odds with emoticons as a language. However, there is a lot more to them than meets the eye. As it turns out, my skepticism wasn’t entirely groundless.

First, the good

Here at 4PSA we occupy three different floors in a traditional office building where others do business as well. Instead of running up and down the stairs all the time, we use this cool app (that we’ve developed ourselves) to communicate and collaborate on tasks. We instant message each other all the time. We don’t always make perfect sense as we rush to choose the right words, but emoticons help. Humor is an especially tough nut to crack without them. Here, I’ll show you what I mean (this is a recreation of an actual conversation I have on a regular basis with my colleague, Claudia).

Claudia: Hey : ) Food’s here but I’m out of bread. Could you spare some?

Filip: No 🙂

By showing Claudia that I’m laughing, I let her know I’m teasing. She now expects me to mend that poor excuse for a joke with a follow up: “sure, come on down, it’s in the cupboard as usual.” But what if our convo went like this:

Claudia: Hey. Food’s here but I’m out of bread. Could you spare some?

Filip: No

Without the emotional backup, my response is cold and upsetting. It gives Claudia the impression that I’m irritated (perhaps by her habit of asking for bread all the time), or that there’s something wrong with me. Notice that I’ve also toned down Claudia’s greeting by eliminating her smiley face. Without any emotion to support it, this alternate version of our chat is uninviting and barren. It’s certainly not what we want from a workplace relationship. Moral of the story? Emoticons rock!

Now the bad

A study conducted in 2008 found that emoticon users experience a “positive effect on enjoyment, personal interaction, perceived information richness, and perceived usefulness.” Truer words were never spoken, BUT, according to the people I’m about to quote next, smileys are robbing us of our writing skills and indeed our real emotions.

Real Clear Science highlights this comment from a Slashdot reader: “Once upon a time, people could communicate emotions effectively simply through the tone of their writing … Now that people have apparently lost this ability, they use a crude text representation of a facial expression. This is not an improvement.”

Rooting for the idea that using pictographs in writing can have a negative side as well, the same site further shares this next remark by journalist Maria McErlane, who told the New York Times in 2011, “I am deeply offended by them. I find [emoticons] lazy. Are your words not enough? To use a little picture with sunglasses on it to let you know how you’re feeling is beyond ridiculous.”

When I first read this abrupt rejection of something so apparently positive, I instinctively thought “narrow minded.” But McErlane was anything but when she gave that statement. And here’s why. Another writer, this one going by the name of Alice Robb, shared a story (as part of a bigger write-up) on New Republic about saying goodbye to a friend who was moving across the country. She had texted her friend an emoji of a crying face, and the friend replied with a chick with its arms outstretched. At the time of the writing, she claimed she wasn’t sure whether their exchange had been heartfelt or ironic, because the pictograms could evoke both. And it’s true. What evidence does anyone have that the person sending them a crying emoji is actually crying or trying to play off the hurt? Common sense alone will tell you that almost none of us actually cry when we send out that particular emoticon. In fact, we probably use it more for humor than for sadness.

So emoticons don’t always make perfect sense and we take this as a given, a fact of life. We shouldn’t. Words have power in a sense that no pictogram can ever have. Words convey ideas. Disruptive, revolutionary ideas that go far beyond drawings of feelings and events. Books cannot be written with emojis (although translations have been attempted) and the more we use pictography in communication, the more we will diminish our chances of writing meaningful texts. Deep is good. Superficial isn’t. Moral of the story? Emoji’s don’t always rock.

Truth be told

Okay, let’s usher in some objectivity for a change. Society has never been perfect, but it has always been on the move. And it has never been as fast-paced as it is today, that much is clear. We pull eight-hour shifts and try to squeeze some personal affairs in the remainder, before our batteries run dry and we hit the sack. Who has the time to summon the exact words to express what you’re feeling every moment of every day with this kind of schedule? Emoticons don’t make a Shakespeare, granted. But they’re efficient. In today’s agitated world, efficiency makes all the difference between living in a mansion or sleeping on a park bench every night rolled up in newspapers. I’ll take the mansion, as I’m sure you will too.

At best, these digital pictograms are a convention, a system, emotional abbreviation that comes in very handy when we’re absorbed by work but still want to connect with those dear to us. The ROFLMAO sign =)) , animated or not, will always be more enthralling than actually writing down the act of:

“Rolling-on-the-floor-laughing-my-ass-off.”

Imagine having to type this entire sentence every time you wanted to express this level of amusement. It would totally take the edge off and it would be a lie every time because, physically, it’s impossible to laugh until your ass falls off : )