The funny-headed characters are boxed in a smartphone somewhere in Taxtopolis city. This is their home.
The Sony Pictures Animation produced by Michelle Raimo and directed by Tony Leondis is the new talk of town but just how do these creatures of facial expression rule our communication world. How did we even get ourselves here in the first place? How do facial smartphone driven objects get to attract such worldwide appeal.
The upcoming film has broken records as the studio assembled the largest ever group of people dressed as emoji across multiple cities - even before the July 28 release date. Across London, Dubai, Dublin, Sao Paulo and Moscow, people dressed up as the ‘emoji’ to mark the World Emoji Day. Some of the participants took up the look of some of the characters of the upcoming movie that include names like Gene, Hi-5, Poop Daddy, Pizza and Heart.
The world of emoji has become a communication reality to Pulsers and a headache to the older generation who are finding it hard to catch up with digital reality.
The characters, or do we just call them symbols, are even being viewed by some as a threat to the written word, communication-wise speaking.
The emoji expression idea, technically referred to as emoticons, or typographic representation of a facial expression, is nothing new. It is only that emojis new relative universality and growing ubiquity has become quite a trend.
The first digital use of emoticons is attributed to computer science professor Scott Fahlman, who noticed jokes on his department’s bulletin board at Carnegie Mellon University were falling flat or being misunderstood.
On September 19, 1982, Fahlman suggested people use a smiley face emoticon to indicate a joke and a frown face to indicate something was not meant as a joke.
“This convention caught on quickly around Carnegie Mellon, and soon spread to other universities and research labs via the primitive computer networks of the day,” Fahlman later wrote. “Within months” he was seeing variations appear like the open-mouthed surprised emoticon and emoticons for people wearing glasses.
Emoji — the actual pictograms you use on your smartphone — were born out of a similar frustration in Japan with the limits of text.
“Emoji makes communication easy during our days. It is a fun way for one to express themselves. It is what everyone in campus is using,” says Joan, a 20-year-old university students.
“I think everyone has their favourite emoji. It all boils down to the facial expressions we are comfortable with while expressing ourselves to our friends. I can easily express my emotions to a friend through emoji than I can do through text messages. Besides, this is good art,” she remarks.
The biggest challenge lies in understanding the interpretation of the already 2,666 emojis or even at the least, the popular ones common on our phones. For example, this year alone, Unicode Consortium, the non-profit group that decides what and when new emojis will be adopted, released 56 more emojis, some that users are still struggling to understand.
“The problem lies on the possible misinterpretation of meaning. I little wink emoji or even a kiss can be so misleading that one can even interpret it as harassment at the workplace or even among friends in college,” says Michelle, a 24-year-old college student.
