POST SIX: EMOTICONS AND EMOJIS

 For my each one, teach one technology, I chose emoticons and, later named, emojis.

A Brief History of Emoticons and Emojis

 Emoticons were discovered by Scott Fahlman in the year of 1982 on an online message board. He found that placing specific symbols in the desired orders of ":-)" and ":-(" could represent faces and indicate whether or not the post at hand was meant to be happy or sad. These two symbols soon expanded as people began to play around and experiment with the symbols, creating even more faces. This gave a Japanese artist the idea to design digital pictures that could be used on a special keyboard to exhibit faces, weather, items, and more. This first ever emoticon keyboard was created in 1999 and soon expanded and inspired many companies after that. In 2010, Unicode, which is the system that unifies encoding all across different platforms,  adopts emojis into their system. In 2011, Apple creates their first ever emoji keyboard. This was the beginning of the rise in what we recognize as the term "emoji" today. 

 

The Positives of Emoticons and Emojis

Emoticons were created to help the true message of a text or typed sentence be conveyed correctly. Using a happy face at the end of a text helps to prevent the recipient in taking that message in a sad context. Emoji and emoticons can also be used despite language barriers. This is extremely useful in online global communication. Emojis and emoticons are also very quick to use. With one tap you can say good luck by sending a thumbs up emoji, rather than clicking eight keys to create the word. Lastly, emojis and emoticons make a message more personal. This usually allows the recipient of the message to resonate with the message more. 

 

The Negatives of Emoticons and Emojis

Emojis and emoticons are often seen as unprofessional and are often described as "inappropriate for the workplace." The symbols can also be used to fake emotion to convince the recipient that you feel a certain way, rather than feeling something different. For example, sending a text saying "i'm fine :)" when you are feeling sad or depressed. Another huge issue is the fact that certain emojis have gained new meanings to them, rather than their original meanings. For example, the goat emoji is now often used to mean "the Greatest Of All Time (G.O.A.T)" instead of just a normal animal. Lastly, up until recent years, emojis have lacked diversity. Since emojis are not held back by a language barrier, they can be used by anyone. However, if you do not have an emoji that looks like you, then these emojis truly aren't as diverse as they seem. Recently, Apple has gotten better at this, releasing emojis of single parents, people with disabilities, different skin colors, and different representations of couples.