Well, I really hate that this is apparently a thing:
It’s ironic. Texting was meant to make communication easier, but it can be much harder to discern someone’s tone over text, especially with inflections as subtle as sarcasm. It’s not as straightforward as tacking a crying-laughing-face emoji onto the end of a message either—sorry, but you are officially Old if you unironically use emojis. Your options are “lol” (which can sometimes come across as quite passive aggressive), “haha” (again, this sounds too abrupt), or, my personal favourite, “lmao” (which translates as a hyperbolic but less blunt “laughing my ass off,” for those who didn’t know). That said—“loool” or “hahahaha” are also good options.
I love emojis—I unironically love them and I almost don’t unironically love anything. I don’t think using them should be “a sign of my age.” My phone is stuffed full of them. What am I supposed to do? Let them sit there, unused, unconsidered? That seems to me to be both wasteful and smacking of ingratitude.
Also, as usual, the author of the piece jumps from Millenial to Boomer, as if there is not a whole generation in between that is always forgotten.
Also, I don’t care, I don’t want to endlessly write out “lol” and “hahaha.” And I don’t approve of vulgarities in texting–speaking of keeping up with the times. I don’t want to type “lm–o” every few minutes when I find something funny. I want to put in pandas and unicorns and that little face with the big glasses. I want to be friendly and have those whom I text perceive my goodwill. The wretched people who made the phone have taken a lot of effort to make all those thousands of wretched little pictures and I don’t know why I can’t be allowed to use them for precisely this reason:
But there are some advantages to young people being hyperconscious of tone of voice over text—I know, for example, that Royal Mail would never text me “your order has been SHIPPED pls Click Here for more information,” but a scammer would. Some people also use “tone indicators” online, which are paralinguistic signifiers to help clarify what a person’s tone is—for example “/j” at the end of a sentence means the author is joking. For people who struggle with non-verbal cues in everyday conversation, communicating like this online can make life considerably easier. It’s also just helpful to have all these different ways to express yourself.
Yes, exactly. It’s so hard to get the point across, and that’s why all the emojis are such a blessing. If I am going to have to live in a world of the voice text, why on earth can’t I live in the world of the unironic emoji? I’m pretty sure this is practically–or is it literally?–a gospel issue. If I can’t put in lots and lots of little faces to communicate what I really mean, forced as I am to communicate all day long without barely ever being “in person,” what on earth am I supposed to do? I’m not allowed to use punctuation anymore, and most of the people I habitually text ignore my awesome gif game. Jesus wants me for his weirdly yellow–no such color must ever be found in nature–sunbeam, and I don’t know how to do that without the actual sunbeam emoji.
As the Teacher says, “the path of the just is a shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day,” (Proverbs 4:18) which I take to mean that the use of whatever kind of technology, even and especially texting, should illuminate the bright, effulgent light of God’s happiness. If Jesus came here today, he would use emojis and he would use them perfectly–I think. But also, get off my lawn.
I gotta go do other stuff. Have a nice day.
