How Your Smileys Are (Incorrectly) Interpreted If You Text Messages to People Under 25
As of this month, there are 3,633 “official” emoticons available worldwide. Tiny pictograms can convey a ton of emotions and ideas, but like any form of symbolic communication, their meanings change over time and among different groups of people, especially if one group is Millennials and the other is Generation Z. Something just as harmless. like folded. hand emoji ? can mean “please,” “thank you,” “high-five,” or “pray for me, I have COVID,” depending on the context and text message.
General rule of thumb: Millennials could popularize texting, but Gen Z was born with it. Their fluidity with language means they can use it more subtly, while older millennials tend to use emojis literally, as intended, to indicate the tone of a message. Generation Z are more likely to use them sarcastically and / or ironically.
Take an emoticon, for example.
Take this one, for example: ?
The simple yellow emoji appeared in the 1960s, and while it started out as a corny symbol of corporate happiness, the pictogram has evolved into a minefield of misinterpretation between generations. To me, the emoji says “this is a laid-back and friendly message,” but to my 20-year-old nephew Finn Gamble, a college student in Santa Barbara, California, he says the opposite.
“To be honest, it sounds ominous,” he told me. This is something you can send to a friend who is late for an appointment. He says something like this: “I put up with you and pretend to be happy, but I’m not happy.”
So what should you use to communicate with youth “frivolously”? You can choose ? The face with the cowboy hat, which, according to emojipedia.com , “can convey a sense of abundance, whim, confidence, adventure, or other feelings” (although this dude seems a bit diligent to me), or try ? – Smiling face with smiling eyes – for a less passive-aggressive tone. You can even add ? or ? if you want to get out of hand.
Laughter, the most confusing medicine
Back in the days before emoji, you could answer a joke online with LOL (or LMFAO if it was really funny) and end the day. But now, laughter on the Internet is another potential separator of old and young.
For example, while it’s the most used emoji in the world , according to CNN Business, it ‘s not cool anymore. (And if you can’t trust CNN Business to tell you what’s cool, who can you trust?)
“I use everything except the laughing emoji,” 21-year-old Walid Mohammed told CNN. “I stopped using it a while ago because I saw older people like my mom, my older siblings and older people in general use it.”
So what does Gen Z use to indicate a hilarious joke? ?
If your first thought was “this skull clearly indicates death or cheap Halloween decoration,” you are probably old. For children, it means “I’m dying of laughter,” or simply, “I’m dead. (Laughing.) “
Alternatively, you can use ?, Crying Loud Face. To me it’s like what you would send to indicate, “Everything I love burned in the fire,” but kids use it like something like “LMFAO.”
The best move in emoji war is not to play
Lots of new emojis on the way (including my most anticipated melting face , which means either “I just nailed a solo from Van Halen’s Eruption or” Today is Tuesday and global warming is real, “depending on your age. between generations is likely to increase even more, until communication between millennia and Gen Z becomes nearly impossible, so it’s best not to worry about that.
If you are older than, say, 25 and trying to speak the same language as teenagers, it won’t work. You’re going to screw up and look stupid no matter what you do (see how that sounded?). So stand up and write whatever you want. End all messages with dots. Send only bee smiley ? and refuse to explain it. Borrow 1920s slang and call your iPhone a “blower.” Have the trainees you write to try to figure out what you mean (and send each other a ? behind your back). After all, you drive a much nicer car than they do, so who really cares what little pictures they send online?
Or better yet, use as few emojis as possible; anyway, that’s what the cool guys do.
“Basic emojis have become so popular that they have become annoying,” says General Z-er Finn. “Some of my friends will get mad at me if I send them.”
However, there is one emoji that all this nonsense does not apply, an icon that all generations agree with: ? means “I like vegetables.”