Upon waking this morning, I noticed that an update had been pushed to my Apple iPhone Cellular Device by Apple (Steve Jobs RIP in peace). I was positively delighted to see that part of the release scope indicated there would be new emojis. Not just any update, this one would include the Eagerly Anticipated and Long Promised middle finger emoji. “Cool!” I exclaimed to absolutely no one in my apartment. “I could probably use a middle finger to go along with the poop and American flag that encompass the near entirety of my emoji vocabulary.” Any normal, rational person would then continue their day unabated. Not this guy. He lives for you, dear readers, and his nose knows.
Update in progress, I actually performed an Internet Search using Cutting Edge Search Engine Technology for the latest iOS update. I was soon treated to views of the new emojis. Dollar sign tongue emoji, roll your eyes caustic bitch emoji, and of course the middle finger emoji. The aptly titled “middle finger emoji” was a new icon that includes a range of realistic human skin tones. Excellent! Pretty weird, though, that Apple was being so matter-of-fact about a symbol that, taken literally, means ‘fuck you’. This sort of up-front expression of obscenity simply isn’t done in the American public sector. Every profane gesture and utterance must be relegated to regulated spaces and time slots, lest the Children be exposed. Yet here it was. Without asking, every child’s iPhone across the nation would now have an obscene gesture available by default. It’s even advertised in the release notes. Accessing the release page has the finger happily flipping me off. So why is this okay? 1Why the sudden change in stance with respect to this particular artifact?
To answer this question, I think we should first figure out what exactly emojis do for us. I mean, I know what they are, and you know what they are. They’re silly little pictures of poops and faces and trains. We send them when we text. The phenomenon of texting has been an interest of mine (See my last entry on the seminal work Modern Romance, by Aziz Ansari) for some time now. Emojis are another piece to that particular puzzle. Texting is, by definition, a divorced form of communication. Emojis serve to counter the lack of intensity and intimacy texting necessarily brings to a conversation. The popularity of emojis isn’t so much that they are cute and stupid, but that they streamline the formidable role that emoticons played in yesteryear – they humanize textual conversation. And they are so delightful because they are so abstract. I can use a poop and an American flag to express anger, sarcasm, joy, silliness, humor, or dismissal, depending on context. There are emoji faces, hands and body postures, activities and objects of interest. In total, emojis are an abstract expression of the human person made virtual. Stylized images of the self. We inject a virtual representation of ourselves into our conversations through an earnest use of emoji.
At a glance, the digitization of self seems like a sacred space – a personal aspect of what we choose to communicate, what we choose to depict as part of our living image. The inclusion of emoji in a cultural demilitarized zone is demonstrated by the fact that society is completely accepting of the middle finger emoji into the vocabulary. As surrogates for human communication, emoji are approaching the linguistic status of beyond reproach. Consider the word ‘fuck’. There is a lot of pressure to keep that word off the airwaves, out of the (soap-ridden) mouths of children. You can’t just put it in the public sphere. The USE of the word is in question. But I’ll bet you have never heard the existence of the word itself called into question. No one says ‘fuck’ is a bad word because it exists. They say ‘fuck’ is a bad word because it was used. The status of ‘fuck’ as a word that exists is not questioned. It cannot be questioned, because it is in the lexicon, and the lexicon is a sacred space. All words, as ideals, are protected, at the risk of absurdity. Words, in themselves, by definition must be objective. Their use can construct a rainbow, but each color is pure light; a word, in and of itself, cannot be broken down into shades of intentionality. ‘Fuck’ is in the dictionary. So is ‘cunt’ and ‘bitch’ and ‘etc.’ . These words are sacred, because the alternative is impossible – that our language is, inherently, and intuitively, impregnated with bias, historicity, and human failure. As fundamental tools and building blocks for expression, this cannot be so, just as a hue of paint cannot be so.
The startling conclusion of this line of thinking is that emoji is a language, consisting of a lexicon for a certain strata of people (smartphone users)2. From a practical standpoint, the emoji keyboard it is as culturally significant as a dictionary. Like words, though they can be created in hatred, used in anger, and erased again from the common vernacular, the issue is not the word, but its immediate use. As I said, the emoji is now planted in the realm of the ideal. It is beyond reproach. If your kid opens a dictionary and finds ‘fuck’ you don’t call Webster. You tell her not to use that word. That we allow words to enter this ideal realm, like gods, unassailable in all things except the haziness of collective memory, is itself fascinating. But more to the point, this explains why we permit the middle finger emoji. If emoji are words, then adding a “bad” word to the dictionary of words is perfectly reasonable. And make no mistake, it is pretty astonishing that as a whole we are so ready and willing to accept even a relatively modest new language into our lives. This is an incredibly fast time frame. If you don’t think so, ask the poor souls who tried to make Esperanto a thing (Hint: They’re dead. 3). It isn’t be easy to make a language that works for so many so quickly4.
Here I can sense a rebuttal – that emojis are too intuitively subjective and that they lack the necessary structure when compared to a true language. As pictograms, they are inherently meaningful for humans, and as such constitute images and icons that are intuitively communicative without contributing to a logical structure. Partly true, but this is an incomplete analysis. The reason is simple. Go look at emojis. All of them. I don’t understand what half of them are. You probably don’t either. I understood even less of them when they first appeared. All of them obtained consensus meaning through use. Language is defined through use. Now see how they are used. We could learn the unknown emojis through social experience. People can communicate some complex ideas with each other through emoji. There is standardization, group-agreement, and as I said, a lexicon. Complex ideas crafted from multiple statements, as well as simpler statements, are both possible and occurent in the emoji dialectic. There are also dialects of Emoji. My poop sarcasm could come across as more honest or downright insulting to someone from a social sphere that is accustomed to using the poop emoji for something else. And I would bet my bottom dollar this distribution is regional (either digital or local).
For emoji as language to make sense, you have to first realize that statements in emoji are also the ‘letters’. That is, syntactically, simple statements via imagery are also the smallest building components of semantic constructs. To illustrate, let’s ask, “If emoji is a language, why do we need it? What about it is so appealing? Why can’t I just say ‘fuck you’ or ‘I am happy’ or ‘catching the train’?” First, wow that is a long question. Second, is it just typing laziness? I think not, as would anyone who has tried to find the perfect emoji to encapsulate an expression. And there lies the real answer. Emoji is so successful because it covers a sorely underrepresented aspect of human communication – emotion and intuitive expression. Yeah, there are shorthand symbols, but pictorially, so much more can be expressed (at risk of cliché) and it is these individual short-hands or emotions that constitute the primary elements of an emoji sentence.
What’s most important isn’t really the semantics of emoji, but that emoji is stuff that we use. It would be nice to understand why. What I believe to be the main drive behind acceptance of emoji as a language is that it grants us time to express Body Language and Emotion. This has been, heretofore, very difficult at best. In fact, I would argue the instantaneous use of pictorial depiction of body language and facial expression was only really possible, in a useful context, in the information age. We had to be able to send these things real-time in a communicative and consistent way before it would ever really serve the purpose of a true Language. What is amazing about this is we now, for the first time ever, have the capacity to censor the appearance of our initial reaction to something. Emotions are not rationally considered. We want them to be; we want emotions to conform to our worldview. With some weak exceptions due to medication, mind-altering substances, and generally wonky shit, we really can’t tailor our initial reactions much. To a certain extent we can suppress them, but micro-gestures and facial tics, body language and non-voluntary responses (like blushing) make this a largely futile effort. As a culture, we have pretty much agreed to go along with the pretend-act people make when they are upset but don’t want to show it. It is like an armistice – we both can’t regulate emotions entirely, so we agree to disregard them when we would both like them to be disregardable {note]On a somewhat related tangent, this is probably the reason for the widespread hesitance in accepting video communication. For precisely the same reason emoji is successful, video chat fails – we are destroying the advantage of non-intimate communication (the regulation of emotional/unintended expression and the combating of the anxiety of immediacy) while still engaging in what is a sub-par conversation. You won’t look the same as in person; digital voice won’t be your voice, etc. It is, at best, a conciliatory gesture when communicating parties are absolutely separated and want a next-best effort. That is why (to my knowledge) video communication is most successful in communication between say, soldiers abroad and their families. In the absence of the intensely loved, even partial intimacy is better. [/note]. Even more so with body language. We can intuitively understand body language, but we do an even poorer job of concealing or manufacturing it than we do with facial expressions. Emoji offers a way to alleviate the anxiety of unrestrained communication. It offers a way for us to consider, over a conscious time frame, the expression we want to wear, and the stance we want to take. It gives pictorial shorthand, with combinations of images expressing complicated or necessarily ambiguous ideas faster (and oftentimes with more imagination) than the typed word can. I guess what I am trying to say is that emoji is cool and good. Or in other words:
Notes
- I am of course referring to the social and cultural context. As a Nietzchean nihilist sociopath monster, I of course condone murder and all immoral activities, including cussing and profane gestures.
- A discussion of classism is here signaled but not conducted because I am not gonna touch that shit yo
- Ouch…burn.
- not that the creators of emoji were cognizant of this sort of effort…I doubt emoji was intentionally created with such a noble goal in mind