Huffington Magazine Issue 54 | Page 72

Exit finds himself returning to the ghost sticking its tongue out. The ambiguity of emoji can also make them frustratingly passiveaggressive, allowing people to send a response that’s not a real answer. A friend complained that her boyfriend has adopted a maddening habit of sometimes answering her specific questions with “ .” It’s an evasion, albeit a friendly one. “You can create a mist of meaning,” noted Tyler Schnoebelen, cofounder of Idibon, a startup analyzing language data, and author of a study on the use of emoticons in social media. “People have a sense of where you’re at, but it’s a little bit obscure because these expressive things don’t mean anything particular.” Companies pushing stickers in their apps boast that their huge (and growing) selection of images ensure an illustration for every occasion, or a sticker pack for every personality. “If you give people a library of a thousand images th ]]