Emojional Intelligence
Half the messages I receive from my boomer gen X millenial colleagues include early 2000s Moto Razr T9 lingo like haha, lol, omg, and my least favorite yikes.
Their acronyms and excessive punctuation are generally used in response to my sui generis way of expressing myself.
I’m Gen Z from Mexico City which means I’m trilingual… Spanish, English, and Emoji. As a digital native, I innately understand the importance of leveraging all the tools technology has to offer that allow us to be more expressive. Emojis have become one of those critical ⚒️. Not only do they offer a glimpse into the future of communication 📲💫 but are also increasingly one of the primary ways we show appreciation 💌 for creators and the works they produce online.
Since my inception 🤫🤧, Emojis have had a subtle yet profound impact on the way we interact. They can be used literally (fire = 🔥) but often develop meanings all their own. For example at Live Bash we LOVE dancing dino.
It’s been said that Inuit have 100 words for ❄️, but Live Bash has 1000 uses for the dancing dino emojI. We sign a lease for a space in LA, you get a dancing dino. You get a parking ticket? Dancing dino. You dispute your parking ticket and get it expunged from your record? Two dancing dino. Dancing Dino is a Marie Kondo approved Emoji; it sparks joy ✨💖✨ and can provide a morale boost in ways that words alone often cannot.
Emojis can do far more than just express delight 🍦🍧🥶 . They’ve become effective vehicles for conveying the whole 🌈 emojional spectrum. Where applauding someone (during a Livestream perhaps 👀) can look like this → 👏, or telling my amazing coworkers that their work is ‘lit’ can look like this → 🔥. These lil’ symbols have taken on greater significance, and allow us to add more style, substance, and feeling to our messages while drastically reducing the word count (to 0️⃣ in some cases). The more we use emojis → the more meaning they accumulate → the more they will work their way into our global culture → the easier it is to honestly understand each other through them and innovate other areas in the same way emojis evolved language. The Neanderthals had cave paintings 🎨, the Egyptians used hieroglyphics, and we in the year 2022 proudly use emojis.
This pertains to Live Bash as we think through new ways to express virtual fandom and how performers receive real-time feedback they need without a live audience. As a fan, how do you laugh, heckle, clap, mosh, applaud, cry, take a photo with your iPad, or miss your favorite 🎶 while in the bathroom 🤬? How will a performer know if they’re crushing or bombing? Do ❤️🔥 👏 😂 🤧 suffice?
We fully understand that performers can’t catch a feel off of emojis alone but we are drawing inspiration from their essence to inform ways that fans and performers can communicate in a genuine way.
☮️ ✌️
Emojional Fresco painting by Michelangelo c. 1512
––
*The opinions and emojis expressed here are my own and not necessarily reflective of those of Live Bash 📹.
