5 reasons why the emoticon must die ☠️⚰️🔪

Death to the emoticon

Mark J Harvey
Sep 8, 2018 · 5 min read

September 19, 1982 is credited to be the first real use of an emoticon. There was (and still is) a need to convey your emotion along with your written words for context. In person (synchronously) we do that with tonality, facial gestures and body language. We do that pretty damn well too. So good in fact that we don’t even realize we’re doing it. It’s engrained into human communication. Fast foward to today’s landscape of rapid asynchronous communication and we are struggling to text those same nuances that are so impactful in our words. We came up with a clever little hack in 1982 to add a happy or sad feeling (massive dynamic range, I know) to the written and read word.

It’s now over 30 years later and we have a plethora of rich media in our landscape to help convey more feelings than you can emote. Emoji, GIFs, stickers, Bitmoji (best), Animoji, Memoji, you could even take a short video of yourself and send it! Yet still so many have a habit of taking a time machine back to the 90s computing era and typing random punctuation that the recipient has to translate in their mind. They’re not even rotated the correct way ffs. Why is this still happening in 2018?

So I started asking people “Why do you still use emoticons?” After all they’re on a modern smartphone or MacBook. It’s 2018!

Reason 1

“It doesn’t always look the same when they receive it on their phone.”
When I send 😅 it may not look the same. Great. Talk to them about that. Have a conversation about it. After all that’s what you’re trying to do. Talk. That’s all we humans mostly do.

Grinning face with sweat on Apple, Google, Twitter, One, Facebook, Samsung, Windows respectively

Fantastic! It’s a shame they all couldn’t just use the best ones (Apple, fight me) and had to “do their own thing”. Completely losing the meaning. 🙄

Reason 2

“It’s faster. Switching keyboards takes too long. I don’t have time”
So you’re saying you want to add feeling to your message but that person isn’t worth the extra 5 seconds? First up I have been highly critical of the iOS keyboard, delete it right now and use GBoard. It even has emoji search (Good job Apple)! If you’re an Android user you’ve had this feature for years now, probably even shipped with your phone. OK iOS users, done? Good, now that you no longer have to do that laborious task of taping the screen a few extra times, the same screen you’re already tapping on hundreds of times a day, you should be right as rain. ☔️

Oh you’re on the computer? And Ctrl + Command + Space is also too hard? Really? “Too hard?”. We’re putting keystrokes in the same realm as making a Gordon Ramsay approved Beef Wellington on Hell’s Kitchen?

I think we forget that texting, by nature, is asynchronous. Meaning the send and receive happen at different times. It doesn’t matter if it’s 1 second apart or 10 minutes. There has never been a message so time crucial that a few extra seconds was life or death. If that was the case, they would have called (which is synchronous).

Reason 3

“I’m too old to use those things”
You’re probably right about that. I mean it’s the reason you never eat cake or candy anymore, watch a Disney movie, go on a rollercoaster or merry-go-round or play any games of any kind at all ever. 👵🏻

After all fun is for children. Business is for adults which is what your messaging is all about. Not even emoticons for you. Just straight words from your depthless soul to the digital abyss until it is received as intended. Plain.

Reason 4

“Nobody cares, it doesn’t matter”
That is true for just about anything. Go ahead and think of something important to you. The environment? Eating healthy and excercising? Raising your kids? You can’t change it, you’re gonna die anyways and they’re gonna die eventually too. See what I did there? Those things are all important to you while you’re here. And it’s while we’re here that we should cherish our time, especially when interacting with one another. ✨

Reason 5

“I don’t think about it. It’s just habit. I’m not used to it”
Well start thinking about it! Break your habit and get used to it! That’s not fair though. You can’t just change overnight (you can but you won’t). A little psychology of habits could be helpful here. You can’t just drop a habit cold turkey, you have to replace a habit with another. Instead of reaching for that pack of cigarettes, get a pack of gum. Instead of reaching for the SHIFT key, reach for Ctrl + Command + Space. Instead of switching to the 123 keyboard and looking for : or ; just hit the smiley face button (just noticed you have to switch keyboards for emoticons too).

Why do you care?

Ostracization used to be one of the worst punishments, which is casting someone out of society, cutting them off from all communication. A punishment worse than death. The modern day version of this is solitary confinement. Abhorrent punishments that no person should have to endure. Today we’re all drinking from the fountain of communication on a device in our palms, and too many of us don’t cherish the gift we’re able to give.

Imagine a world where people take a little more time when communicating with others. It wasn’t so long ago that we used to painstakingly hand-write letters, trying to express our deepest passions and feelings. Using words to their extent to try and convey what we would in person. Look around today and you can send a message to anybody anywhere in the world almost instantly but can’t take a few extra seconds to give that person the best experience they can, while the time has never been better.

The next time someone puts a bit of effort into their messages with you, try returning the favour, you might actually enjoy it. Better yet don’t wait for them. When you do receive these gifts, consider it a bit rude not to return the favour. Like giving someone a big hug and they just stand there. Almost as rude as responding to rich media with emoticons.

People are doing an antequated thing out of habit.

Let the emoticon troll comments begin.

    Mark J Harvey

    Written by

    designer of digital goods @markjharvey

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