GIFs, emoji, Snapchat, and the future of self-expression
I have 14 messenger apps on my phone’s home screen 😳. That’s 14 different ways for me to send the same message to, mostly, the same people. Some of them let me send shorter or longer messages, some let me attach photos that are permanent or that disappear, and at least 3 of them let me attach 💸 to my messages. Every time I want to send you a message, I have to decide whether I want to send you a Twitter DM, a Snapchat 👻, an iMessage, or just call you 📞.
Messaging tech is giving us new ways to express ourselves online.
Until recently, talking to your friends on the Internet was pretty limited — you basically had access to text messages and voice calls. But now things like emoji, GIFs, and specialized apps are adding important texture to our conversations.
When you talk to someone IRL, you’re not just talking with words. Your facial expressions 💁, tone of voice, body position, and hand movements 🙌 are also helping them understand you. They happen automatically, so you don’t have to concentrate on them, but they’re critical to communicating when you’re being sarcastic, passionate, or silly. A shrug can tell more about your mood than any sentence.
But when you’re talking to someone via text, they can’t see you ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. It’s not surprising, then, the young people who are building more of their relationships online are the first people to pick up the new messaging technology. This new 🌊 of apps is bringing back a lot of the nuance that we lost to our keyboards — and that nuance lets us be more complex people on the web.
Emoji have become the emotional language of the Internet.
They’ve only been around for a few years, but emoji have become pervasive because they add so much emotion to a message. They’re not the first smiley faces for messaging (AIM had smileys before Emoji, as did Skype), but they are the first real standard to work across operating systems and applications.
Emoji originally spread through personal text messages, but now they’re popular in business slack channels 📟, corporate twitter accounts, and even billboards. They immediately make messages more personal, so they’re useful anywhere you’re communicating a feeling with text.
Similarly, GIFs have escaped message boards, Snapchat isn’t just for naked selfies🛀 (I still don’t think it was ever for naked selfies, but at least it’s losing that reputation), and we’re getting a lot more options when we talk to one another online.
These new technologies are helping us create a digital body language and tone.
We’re changing how we talk to each other, which makes it easier for us to have relationships through the Internet. When we can express ourselves, it’s also easier to differentiate from one another and feel unique. That uniqueness gives us our sense of identity — once I can be someone online, it’s easier to figure out who, exactly, I want to be. (Hint: for me, it involves a lot of 📺)
Rich messaging is a natural evolution for a world that’s spending more time online, but the best apps have come from some surprising places. Instead of mimicking our offline habits with things like real-time video chat or permanent pictures📷 of our actual facial expressions, we’ve developed asynchronous platforms that let us chat when its convenient and ephemeral photos that let us share a moment without being self-conscious.
We’re still at the beginning of the messaging revolution, but the results so far are exciting 😁.
Social networks have moved big chunks of our relationships online. Some of those pieces can be managed with simple text or photos, but others are going to require methods that are more subtle. Inventing new ways to communicate is critical to building Internet identities, and the 14 apps on my home screen are just the start.
What’s your favorite way to communicate online? Tell me on Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook, Email, SMS, Reddit, or in a comment/post thing here on Medium.
