Exit
Snoop Dogg, sells $30,000 a week
worth of digital stickers, according
to the Wall Street Journal.
And while my father still isn’t
the typical emoji and emoticon
user, emoji use in Japan spread
from teenage girls, their early
adopters, through all demographics. Lango notes that its users are
currently about 40 percent male,
and between 15 and 25 years old
on average.
As we continue communicating more consistently, with more
people, in more places, than before,
we’ve turned to images as a way to
transpose some offline customs,
like comfortable silences between
friends, into the online realm.
Mimi Ito, a cultural anthropologist researching technology use at
the University of California, Irvine,
explains that while email and desktop correspondence tends to be
focused on completing a set task, a
great deal of mobile communication
— given how frequently we have
our hands on our phones — is about
sharing an “ambient state of being.”
People tend to text a great deal with
just two to three people they know
well, but they simultaneously seek
to maintain a “virtual co-presence”
with nearly a dozen acquaintances.
In these cases, pictures —
CULTURE
HUFFINGTON
06.23.13
Which emoticons you use
says something about you. Just
as your word choice or accent
says something about you.”
vague, but also personalized —
come in handy. A typed message
seeks a definite outcome or answer. Emoji are like the smile from
a colleague across the room, or the
small talk you make walking to get
coffee. It’s pointless communication that nonetheless puts you in
a good mood.
“Part of the reason the volume of
text messaging is so high because
lot of exchange is just, ‘This is what
I’m doing, this is what I’m feeling,’
which is transmitting, ‘I’m here
with you, I’m connected to you,’”
said Ito. “People often like to feel
like they’re inhabiting the same
space as each other... Emoji and
emoticons are really good for conveying that kind of thing.”
As people come to rely on emoji
to translate face-to-face habits
into the digital sphere, many have
picked out a favorite emoji they
return to over and over again. For
me, it’s the monkey cradling its
head in its hands. A friend says
she’s partial to the “cheek guy” — a
smiling yellow face — while another