I like your face. Emojis in 2017.

Emojis the revolutionary addition to mobile communication but what are they? For those who've been asleep since 2011 and haven't seen the influx of Emojis in and out of media platforms this is their definition.

Emoji - a small digital image or icon used to express an idea or emotion in electronic communication.

'Emoji liven up your text messages with tiny smiley faces', is a common phrase among the millennials and older generations yet some people don't seem to understand, 'It's just silly, writing a message should be short, simple and straightforward.' When you look at it from a more positive outlook you begin to understand that the use of these little yellow smiley faces and the odd poo shapes can allow us to express particular emotions far quicker than use of words. 

They've populated everywhere at this point, my 8 year old sister knows them, it's an accessible way for her to show me her emotion through text when she doesn't know the specific word for it. She often sends me a smiley face after I've asked, "How are you?" It allows her to show me that she's okay without her little brain attempting to squeeze out a difficult word to express how she is. It makes our complex library of emotions easy to express. If you're happy you'll use the simple smiley, yet if you're putting on a happy face but secretly you're not feeling to great then you'd put something that completely links to that.

You do begin to wonder though, have they gone too far? In some ways yes as we don't need a paperclip emoji as it's relatively useless - be honest, you've never used it - yet in other ways the collection of these tiny images allows you to tell someone exactly what's going on in a few taps of their screen. For example:

I'm getting on the bus. Goodbye.


See the difference? One uses exactly 32 touches of your keypad to say something yet the other expresses the exact same thing in just 4 taps. 1800+ different images are now used as emojis which then begs the question "Is it really any quicker?" As 26 letters is simple to speak with but 1800 emojis means there's a lot of scrolling to find which one will express your specific interests. The simple answer is all in the combination, nobody really uses only emojis they usually add it to a line of text to add the emotion.

You looked good today.

You looked good today 

Or maybe

You looked good today 樂

It changes the whole meaning of the small and simple message. In everyday conversation we look at a person's face and other details to fully see behind their words. This not so complex idea allows us to do just that from many miles away without the use of internet.

Nobody can say that they dislike Emojis as secretly they know they'll use them all of the time. It's become the social etiquette.
Now if you're frowny facing at the fact that it's not 'proper english' then you should probably turn that into a happy face as it's making you understand your friends and families just a little bit easier.

Plus who doesn't like turning an innocent vegetable into a completely not innocent euphemism?