Emotions through Emoticons

Emoticons in a simple definition are the combination of the words"emotional" and "icon". The words emoticons and emojis are interchangeable, they mean the same thing. Emoticons are "glyphs used in computer-mediated communication" to represent an idea. Emojis are a worldwide way of communicating emotions without actually saying how you feel. They have been updated many times to become more realistic looking. In addition, there are over 3,000 emojis as of September 2021, which includes the sequences for gender, skin tone, and flags. 

The first emoticon was created in 1982 by Scott E. Fahlman, Professor at Carnegie Mellon. The first emoticon was the smiley face and it looked like this ":)". He also flipped the end parenthesis to the other side and created a frowny face. This was groundbreaking because people were now able to send something that could show how they were feeling. A couple years later, emojis developed further in Japan. This is where emojis really took off and started becoming popular. Now, Apple has created an entire keyboard that even comes with a search bar to find the perfect emoticon. Fahlman had the idea for people to contribute their own ideas for new emojis through the standard keyboard characters. He would disapprove of how emojis are created today. 

Emojis are used throughout society today and there are even movies and commercials about emojis. They have made their impact on society and don't seem to be leaving popularity anytime soon. Personally, I feel that emojis add that emotion that text cannot produce or properly convey. However, they are destroying society. We are losing the ability to actually express our emotions but instead use emoticons to tell how we are feeling. That is why it is important to regulate the amount of emojis you send. In addition, some people can interpret an emoji in a completely different way than you were meaning to convey. This can also be troubling because emojis can wrongly express our emotions. When deciding what emoji to use make sure to think about how others would interpret it.  

I send emojis occasionally because they are not that important to me. I find that it takes more time to pick and choose what emoji I am going to send and I end up just not choosing anything. I do have to say my favorite emoji to use would be the puppy dog eye emoji. It is pretty recent but I love sending it when I'm texting something very sappy. At the end of the day, sending a text with or without an emoji won't be the end of the world. So, have fun and send emojis :)