In what seems to be the inevitable death of literature, more and more people confirm the dumbness of the thought that one should, instead of using an adjective to express emotion, use a shitty little icon that looks like it belongs in some Teletubby episode.
Originating from Japan, Emojis are what bring the most insincerity to daily communication. If you like reading hieroglyphs then go to Egypt, and don’t come back.
Last year Oxford Dictionaries announced its Word of the Year to be, in fact, not a word, but a symbol meaning different things to different people. To be exact, they picked the one which sparks the most rage in me, this one:?. If you use that, question your existence.
I think some acronyms like “lol” are okay if not overused, but don’t try to extend your argument with your “xD”s, where the amount of “D”‘s appended after the “x” is a random number between one and ten. It’s often unnecessary to spam the same icon over and over. What you’re doing is not helping and not meaningful to the conversation at all. In some scenarios it is often not clear enough whether to act serious or not, as your ten icons of kissing faces is just a little bit awkward.
Why do we have to dumb down the way we communicate? What we’re doing is basically supplying lazy people the tools they need to communicate lazy and to keep being lazy.
Some mean this is “post-modernism”, a positive change; but I say that reading on the internet is starting to feel like reading a pre-kindergarten children’s fairy tale. We’re mentally declining ourselves in the way we express and comprehend emotions.
In a mission of fighting boredom, people are translating whole novels to books filled with Emoji. One particular is Emoji Dick, a translation of Moby Dick. On the cover is a pixelated icon of what seems to be the Emoji-equivalent of a whale.
Reading other’s opinion of the novel made me nod my head in agreement as “That’s astoundingly useless” could’ve not hit the point more than I’d ever be able to express it. The fact that you can spend $200 on this is a question of God’s existence. At least we can stamp Emoji Dick off as just a joke.
Thanks to the internet, such progress of human achievement is possible, and backed with crowd-funding by the hundreds eagerly waiting to donate their next $50 to projects which will for sure increase the literacy rate of children and make the world a better place.