The digital world has been making advances of all kinds. Things are being made more convenient, more efficient and democratization of opportunity is the buzzword. But once in a while when modernity embraces the primitive, things end up dangerously regressing.
I faintly recall reading that many millennia ago the Egyptians used to communicate through a pictorial language called hieroglyphics. The chances of that script colliding with the rapidly advancing digital world are next to miniscule. But happen it did with, as I’ve pointed out, disastrous consequences.
It all started very innocuously sometime in the early 2000s with a simple 🙂. As something that communicated happiness in shorthand, it was novel and efficient. It was closely followed by 🙁 and a few more. So far so good. Harmless, you could say. In fact, in the initial pre-smartphone era, most devices could not display pictures and we had to be content with a qwerty keyboard adaptation of these silly fellows - like :), :( and so on. The point is, the sphere of influence was very limited, it was quite rudimentary and a little quaint.
Initially, when I noticed these funny characters in mails and texts, I attributed these to the sender, depending on the time stamp of the message, being either in a state of inebriation or being massively hungover. Ultimately, a few years after the trend caught on, some kind soul led me to the light and put me wise to what these things meant.
There is usually a period of bliss when you break into a fraternity. This was the era when my mails and texts used to be liberally peppered with :), :( and even :-. I once went as far as to experiment with ;) to denote a sardonic smile. In short, all good, I was keeping pace; one could even say I was enjoying myself.
Life has taught me many things, all of which I have resolutely learnt nothing from, but the chief lesson is that when it appears that things are coasting along, you can be sure there is an inevitable sharp bend ahead and, unseen on the other side, two trucks are trying to overtake each other at high speed thus blocking the entire road and the only way to survive is to drive off the road and hope that the slope downwards is less steep than it actually looks.
And so it was. With the advent of smartphones, the game changed, the variables grew exponentially. And, most brutally, it all happened in the proverbial blink of an eye. Soon I was beginning to realize that my messages were looking relatively lacklustre. “Happy Birthday Mohit” should have normally met the needs of the situation, but it would be followed quickly by someone in the group going “Happy birthday Mohiiiiiitttt🌹🌹🌺🌈❤❤🐝”. If you were Mohit, you can’t be blamed for thinking that one of the two is excited at his birthday while the other is ticking a box!
I did take an honest stab at figuring out these emojis and the wealth of meaning behind each of them. It all seemed so intuitive to my kids but I was all fogged up. They mostly looked quite similar and the differences seem very nuanced to me. I mean, please explain 😣 vs 😖 or 😲 vs 😮…
Not one to give up easily, I changed tack. Punctuation adds power. So I moved to “Happy Birthday, Mohit!” and soon graduated to “Happy Birthday, Mohit!!!”. But my competition was evolving even more rapidly. “Mohiiiiiitttt” had become “Mo..” and there would now be some cakes and lights and balloons. I was being outpaced by sophisticated individuals who had tons of time and the inclination to devote to enhancing their pictorial vocabulary.
Today the emojis are so pervasive and deep, they are actually arranged by categories. By people, animals, vegetables & fruits, and I am not kidding, by Flags! I am barely able to decide when to 🙂 and when to 😀 . To expect me to 😂 or 🤣 is unfair. And then I see an inverted face, one with a halo, another with an ice pack, one with green puke and I just feel totally at sea.
The problem is it creates an imbalance in the natural order of things. Anyone would tell you that the only way to control a situation and maintain authority in the family is when your kids assume you know more than them. And that’s not going to happen if your daughter rolls on the floor, laughing (ROFL, as I believe the technical term is) everytime she notices the wrong usage of emojis. With a POL (Peal of laughter, Ha - bet you didn’t know that one!), she would point out that I used 😞 instead of 😔. Huh?
Some people have evolved to a level of mastery over the language where they have just stopped using words any more.
“😀😁😱👌🏼🌺“, they say. Or “🌝🌈🤪😍😍👿🚲🛵”. Sometimes they even say “😡🤨🤬❤️💕🐍🐍💕〠“. No words alongside to help decode. Not even the key to the cipher…
These are the times when I wish I possessed the brazenness of a Krishnamachari Srikkanth who delivers the most atrocious Hindi lines with complete insouciance. On national TV, no less. Despite the TV anchor pointedly asking his question in English, our man would lull the anchor into a false sense of security by starting with a “Whaaat machaaan,…..” and then break off into his bizarre Hindi leading to a usually unenlightened, but vastly entertained, audience.
The problem though is that the emojis are now ending up communicating much of the meaning, beyond even the words. Just as the tone and body language do in the world of verbal communication. And here’s the thing – in the physical realm you control your tone of voice and body language. No way you’re going to get it wrong inadvertently. You’re not going to go to a funeral service and start doing the tango. But with emojis, it can go horribly wrong. A “Deepest condolences at your loss 😂” is not uncommon in the world of rapid texting. Technology, which jumps in with alacrity at the slightest opportunity in the form of autocorrect and muddles up my words hopelessly, does precious little when I use the wrong emojis. I type something like “Sorry boss, unable to attend your son’s Upanayanam 😎”. Autocorrect presumptuously jumps in and corrects “Upanayanam” to “Upanayan amit” but looks the other way when it comes to 😎, possibly stifling a smirk in the process!
Something tells me this is not a passing fad. Emojis are here to stay. And the last I looked, there was no “Learn emojis in 30 days” on Amazon. It all seems so hopeless…
I can’t help feeling it’s a coordinated effort to cut humans out of the mainstream. First came passwords, t-pins and i-pins, that effectively shut you out from the digital universe. Then came the mega scam called KYC, which is routinely perpetrated on an unsuspecting public every few months. Why my own bank would want to know me every so often is a mystery to me. Sometimes I wonder if they mean it in a biblical sense. And with many of us having multiple bank accounts these days, I’m sure you feel like you’re constantly being known out of shape! Anyway, using the cunning KYC route they revoke your access to your money. Still, all this so far hadn’t excluded me from the conversation. I may be shut out from all kinds of things but I could still talk, chat and communicate. With emojis, I think the matrix has fired its latest and probably most telling salvo in the man vs machine war. And man is on the ropes. Possibly even down for the count …
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