While I always fancied myself a riveting orator, I was never cut out for drama school. I could deliver speeches, inspire, make them cry, make them think, maybe even laugh. But cast me in an on-stage role and I was as convincing as B-grade porn. It was about getting into character and my failure therein; my method acting mantra was simply, don’t do it, any of it, ever! My social score card may have suffered on account of this inability to connect, but I survived, without ever wishing to express any angst.
Back then, most of us didn’t feel the need to emote; it just wasn’t done. Everyone had their moments and you kept them precisely there – to yourselves. Sure, a bit of a heel-click and a dance wasn’t out of place, but to show sorrow out in the open, why you’d sooner hang out your unwashed Y-fronts to air in the front yard.
Today, if simply talking about your last garden gala doesn’t tear you up publicly, you are prescribed therapy. It is de rigueur to cry often, the more inexplicable the circumstance the better. It’s called being in touch with your soft side. I think it’s for people who are softly touched in the head. Which explains why emojis, or emoticons, or wordless garbage by any other name, are so relevant in times today. It isn’t enough to merely say something and assume that people will get the embedded humour. You have to make it explicitly clear, like that mutual fund fine print. I didn’t squirm half as much when people wore Crocs anywhere outside the house, as when an emoji which looks like a yellow egghead crying and laughing at the same time was inducted as Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2015.
A pictograph as a word; the modern-day Shakespeare is going to be a mixed-arts sophomore. The end of civilisation is truly nigh.
I believe that the reason why emoticons came into being is because 140 characters of an SMS don’t accommodate for punctuation. Without italics or the right pauses, one is reading the thoughts of a robot – seamless but also soulless. Emojis help fill that gap. They convey your general state while reading or responding, even if the words bely that humour.
So, if you ever see an intelligent one allowing self to use emoticons, it is because s/he is trying to keep the message undistorted for the simpler minds. Sarcasm is a wasted virtue in the written form of any language. Except emojis, where you can sign off with a sly winky.
But then, there are the lazy millennial lot, the kind for whom emojis are a natural linguistic evolution; for the set that can’t tell their ‘theirs’ from their ‘there’s’, and if you had to read that again, then you are part of the problem, kiddo. Screw learning, just suffix a smiley and it’s good to go.
My acquired-English sensibilities never allow me to lend myself to hyperbole. ‘It’s alright’ is a very positive review in my mind. To be ‘absolutely stunningly awesome’ in my mind, you’d have to be a young Brigitte Bardot, riding a unicorn, a la Godiva. And even then… I have done a whole piece on emoticons, yet I haven’t used one insofar. For posterity, let the record show that I couldn’t find the keystroke for the emoji of a bald man tut-tutting softly under his breath while he nods in despaired dissent.
This column is for anyone who gives an existential toss
