The Reinterpretation of Emojis
Towards a New Iconography
The expansion and adoption of new emoji palates gives people a chance to use pictures rather than words to express themselves. As a society we are in the process of collectively determining what some symbols mean. The perverse among you are already well acquainted with peaches and eggplants. Before too many emojis fall to a similar fate, I want to get my two cents in. I would like to propose that the following emojis be used to express the ideas, concepts, and states of being that I find hard to express otherwise:
Emoji Name: Sleepy Face
Gutbloom Name: Achoo
Meaning: I just sneezed and now, somewhere around here, there is an wet wad of mucus waiting to be discovered. Let’s hope it’s not on my groin.
Emoji Name: Raised Fist
Gutbloom Name: Wank Hand
Meaning: The person speaking is wasting my time, and I’d like to either go get a sandwich or check my Medium stats.
Emoji Name: Right Pointing backhand index
Gutbloom Name: Blame Game, right
Meaning: The sense of quiet confidence that comes when someone is about to blame you for something, but you are already more than prepared to deflect the blame by saying that they should talk to Tom, who is sitting right over there.
Emoji Name: Bikini
Gutbloom Name: Vampire Swimsuit
Meaning: The invisibility that you feel even though you are the only person in the room wearing shitty clothes and whose waist is bigger than their shoulders.
Emoji Name: Lipstick
Gutbloom Name: Red Rocket
Meaning: The dog is excited
Emoji Name: Mouse Face
Gutbloom Name: Rattenkönig
Meaning: Death
Emoji Name: Hamster Face
Gutbloom Name: The Banker
Meaning: A special kind of debt awareness. The feeling that comes after knowing you are in debt and then buying a [n] online, where n = a matador suit, a model of the HMS victory, or one month access to nakedscubawomen.com.
Emoji Name: Rabbit Face
Gutbloom Name: The Bunny
Meaning: Sexual humiliation
Emoji Name: Cow Face
Gutbloom Name: Braunvieh
Meaning: Love, Devotion, Surrender
Emoji Name: Pig Face
Gutbloom Name: Pig Face
Meaning: The excitement that comes from knowing you are about to have a humiliatingly good time
Emoji Name: New moon
Gutbloom Name: Black Spot
Meaning: I’m depressed
Emoji Name: New moon with face
Gutbloom Name: Trying hard
Meaning: I’m depressed, but I have you fooled because I’m smiling
Emoji Name: Waxing gibbous moon
Gutbloom Name: Waxing Depression
Meaning: I might be sick, or tired, or… maybe I’m getting depressed
Emoji Name: Waning gibbous moon
Gutbloom Name: Waning depression
Meaning: I feel a little less awful, maybe I’ll go to work today… if I still have a job
Emoji Name: Full moon with face
Gutbloom Name: Happy man
Meaning: I think I might be happy, but I don’t trust it enough to say it.
Emoji Name: Hot dog
Gutbloom Name: Lips & Assholes
Meaning: Comfort, specifically, food comfort
Emoji Name: Hamburger
Gutbloom Name: Hamburg
Meaning: Acceptance, specifically, total existential acceptance
Emoji Name: Bread
Gutbloom Name: Carb Loaf
Meaning: Not only do I want to eat all of the carbs before me, but once again I am stunned by the recognition that the world is made of carbs
Emoji Name: Soft ice cream
Gutbloom Name: Carvel
Meaning: My belly is full of gas. I hope nobody gets close to me.
Emoji Name: Doughnut
Gutbloom Name: The circle of life
Meaning: A special kind of self-hatred. The self-hatred that comes from knowingly indulging in self-destructive behavior.
Emoji Name: Circus Tent
Gutbloom Name: Work place
Meaning: The paralysis that develops when your work place is so crazy you just read Medium all day on your computer. The tent symbolizes the fact that you work with clowns, strong men, and animals.
Emoji Name: Slot Machine
Gutbloom Name: Conversational jackpot
Meaning: The boredom you experience when someone completely ignores your over-the-top social signals (looking away, checking your watch, exhaling loudly) and continues to talk even though you have clearly communicated that you have no interest in what they are saying. Slot emoji is the shorthand version of, “I hit ‘blah, blah, blah’ on the conversational slot machine.”
Emoji Name: Soccer Ball
Gutbloom Name: Flop
Meaning: The special gratitude you feel when someone, like my wife, has sex with you even though they aren’t into it. Why a soccer ball? Because soccer is the game in which players “flop”, or go down with great drama and enthusiasm to help out their teammates, but nobody is buying it.
