Why My Attitude to Emoji Did a 180

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I mean, the above is basically the essence of my turnaround. For many years I was of a much different opinion about emoji – I thought they were pointless, stupid, and I would have never used one even in a T9 text. On the internet I used the voraciously, though, but they were known as 'smilies' and seemed a totally different thing – plus most of them depicted smilies electrocuting each other or shooting guns or humping or spilling beer instead of : ) or ; ) like weirdos and dummies in chats might use. I suppose it's a pointless digression, but to me smilies and emoji are conceptually different things that share a similar purpose.

I didn't think about smilies/emoji much from 2005 (when the last forum I enjoyed browsing shut down) to 2013. In that time I still considered them childish things undeserving of a serious mind, fripperies that only made the appearance of communicating anything, creating a muted shorthand for the illiterate to toy with.

Then I picked up a relatively more modern phone and starting using apps and stuff (I am a very late and reluctant adopter of social media) and I found myself using them more and more. The famous emoji 'Face with Tears of Joy' rose like a monolith, and the rest is history. Now I catch myself wanting to use emoji in Facebook, texting emoji to friends who never abandoned a distaste of them (mostly to annoy them and amuse myself), and doing wicked Snaps with emoji making half the point.

I gave in. I joined the merciless social media march. I sold my credibility and the security of being a Skeptical Person, and dove begrudgingly in. Being simultaneously out of touch and trying to decide what 'in touch enough' was for me made for some strange years, which are ongoing. There is a surreal quality to using five different apps and platforms regularly to communicate with friends. It's bizarre to me. To the old me it would have been unthinkable, a grave and simultaneously frivolous mistake, to waste my time in such a way or even to care.

But it did change. And now, instead of wondering whether to write anything at all or which word to delete, I spend actual time to throw an emoji into a text. It's both weird and funny to me. I guess it's more fun to use them, even if only in a sneering way, but they are useful to provide connotations - they can even make sarcasm fly in text form, which is actually quite an elegant solution to a real problem.

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User Comment Rodeo: Generation Text; Its Detractors and Malcontents

A recent CBC article claims a few things so startlingly obvious that the sound of a gong ought to be looped over it. The findings demonstrated, and you might want to sit down for this one, that people who texted more (don't sweat, the breakpoint is 200 + texts) often tended to be less thoughtful than those who didn't. Also among the findings was the gem that the 200+ text club was (30%) more likely to be fixated on "wealth and image than an ethical life". Now, as unsurprising as this study's conclusions are, they are of limited truth.

Firstly, only teenagers or immature adults can actually muster up the energy to text more than 100 times a day. Yet I can be surprised by texting culture. At 15 seconds per text, 100 texts would only require a time investment of 25 minutes. Scale that any way you want, and remember that serial texters are quick, and it's easy to conclude that a serial texter can text 400+ times a day and still have lots of time left over to socialize 'face to face' (oh shit, that term is going to get worn out in the next few years). This 'texting' business, which is correctly SMSing business, has for many years now been a cultural crisis in the making. We all stepped in it with full confidence, so now we get to suffer it. Suffer the outrageous extremes of an increasingly dim and unfunny era.

You can already see what kind of User Comment Rodeo it's going to be. The best kind. Because you know the ageists, the trolls, the dickweeds, the self-described experts, the geniuses – in short the whole, illiterate, unwashed, entitled, self-satisfied mass of the public – is going to unable to prevent themselves from puking their word nonsense onto this story like tainted cocktail shrimp at a bad house party. Listen up, I know that serial texters are often total wankers. I understood years ago that they lacked the self-reflection expected of a great ape, dolphin, or crow. Don't forget that this study is biased: note that it focused on first year students. Don't buy into the hype without thinking critically about it first. First year students are so rarely aware of themselves that the study is unfair and biased. It stooped for low-hanging fruit when there are plenty of studies that can judge the adult narcissist sociopaths in business, finance, and politics.

But enough of my ado about nothing; let's have others' ado about nothing:

The cream of the crop, my friends. These posts were not only so good that some people voted for them, but upwards of 200 votes were cast per comment. Can you spot the deafening irony? Should I even bother? Instead, bring your attention to the post by the user named 'bootselectric'. Oh, how the point is missed. The biggest cop-out, btw, is getting fired by text message. That shit actually happens. Oh and nobody 'embraces their lives' around anything. Anyways, all of these posts (worthless activities on a worthless medium - yes I understand the height of irony that is my acknowledging this) were voted for more than 200 times. Irony.