With Egypt focusing a lot on promoting tourism in its country, I came across several articles trying to understand the way the First Men of the Nile lived through the hieroglyphs they left behind. And I could not help but wonder. Are we were getting it all wrong? Does the hieroglyph of a cat actually mean the goddess Bastet or is it simply the Egyptian emoji equivalent of 😹?
Emojis erupted a decade earlier when Apple included them in iPhone’s operating system. Since then, they have boomeranged into a cultural phenomenon. Elitists have decried it. Huffington Post complained that ‘after 5,000 years of technological progress, we’ve returned to eking approximate meaning from pictograms’. CNBC claimed that emojis are evidence of the ‘the death of written language’. But despite all the huffing and puffing, the naysayers were helpless to stop the avalanche of emojis from our phones to print, plays and even courtrooms.
The Changing Landscape of Emojis
Emojis on newspaper might appear blasphemous to you. But USA Today ran them next to its front-page stories. Before you gasp, hear this. Four of Shakespeare’s plays have been translated into emojis by Penguin, because it obviously makes more sense for Romeo to say YOLO Juliet. Just look at the covers below. The ICSE student in me turned in his grave.
Emojis are also revolutionizing sex for women where a company called Flirtmoji is offering vagina emojis “in all their hairy, asymmetrical glory” to substitute the peach.
And as a lawyer, I was absolutely bamboozled to know that emojis are now being used as legal evidence. For instance, a pimp was nabbed for running a prostitution racket. The evidence- his whatsapp message to a sex worker. The message read: “Teamwork make the dream work” accompanied with high heels (👠👠) and money bag (💰). Prosecutors argued that the the message implied a ‘working relationship’ between the two of them.
🤯
Ambiguity in Emojis
It is also no revelation that emojis have permeated into our communication to such an extent that they are now a reflection of our mood. Consequently, they are subject to the malleable rules that govern our whims. Take for instance, the newly minted passive-aggressive emojis. A 😊 does not mean a happy face any longer. It has been replaced by 😇 has replaced it. 😊 is now used to jab the recipient infuriatingly. A lone 👍 no longer signifies approval but is now abused as a way of ending conversations you do not want to continue. A dismissive bye, if you will. And what is worse, a perfectly innocent text, unaccompanied with emojis, gives the recipient a vibe that something is wrong. If you find this hyperbole, picture a goodbye message without emojis. Looks like something John Wick sends you before he stabs with you a pencil.
Future of Emojis
So, despite our cultural resistance, much like capitalism- emojis are here to stay,…and confuse.. But is Emoji becoming a language in itself like hieroglyphs? Eh, I doubt it. A reader of hieroglyphics would have had to have a working knowledge of about 600 characters to understand complex texts. Hieroglyphs employ grammar. Rules govern them like any other language. So, let the millennials may play dumb charades in emojis. They will continue to remain a supplement to a text-based conversation rather than a substitute.
Or so I hope.
In short, if the aliens of the future find emojis amidst the ruins of our civilization, one can only hope they know we were bilingual in text and faces. Or else, their archaeologists are going to definitely frown over the curious stuff we were up to with aubergines and peaches, our unhealthy affinity towards poop and the fact that we worshipped GOATs 🐐.
Not that inaccurate a description now, is it?
