"My Favourite Emojis, Stickers, and Gifs"

I still feel flustered when I remember the first time I learned what an emoji is. That is because I learned about this new god of language quite late than my peers.

^{Copyright-free emoji picture from Pexel}

It was 2012, I did not own a smartphone which many of my friends did and I did not use social media either, which was weird for a graduate student. However, my friends used to put weird signs and symbols with dots and brackets and D’s and P’s and 3’s etc. when they texted me in my button phone since 2010. I did not realize what those were and being a very shy and introverted person, I never managed to ask them what those were. I know it sounds pretty prehistoric, but that happened.

When I got my first smartphone in 2012, I learned what those strange dots and brackets meant, and I also understood how I did not quite get the meaning of the messages my friends sent me before. I realized that, though I behaved like a prehistoric fool who did not know any better, the world had ironically shifted to an ancient hieroglyphic type of

language and to my horror I also realized that much of the time I missed the sarcasm and took many of the messages seriously, which were quite the opposite. Probably the moment can be perfectly described with the following emojis:

😅 Grinning Face with Sweat
🤣 Rolling on the Floor Laughing
😬 Grimacing face
🙄 Face with Rolling Eyes

Since then these have remained some of my favourite emojis too probably because a lot of things that happen in my life correspond to these expressions. Also when I am sarcastic, I use a winking face with tongue out😜. And who does not love the smiling face with heart eyes 😍 and the most common smiling faces 🙂 😊!

The emojis are now readily available in our devices, and everyone knows the basic usage system.

These tiny expressions along with our written communication has added value to our correspondence as we can imagine better what the other person is trying to say to us.

Also emojis are universal. They obliterate the language barrier among people who speak different languages. The emoji’s can also give us a certain kind of feeling of closeness with our loved one’s as the visual representation of the expressions gives us better imagination of what our loved ones are feeling. Ludwig Wittgenstein has said, "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world." How true is that for emojis, stickers, and gifs too. So I try to use them all the time. However, the way millennials and gen Z uses emoji, sticker and gif is entirely different. Often we millennials do not understand what gen z is talking about looking through their emoji choice. Many people often argue that new generation is forgetting the use of expressive language.

However, I disagree to that. I think as the use of emoji and the meaning behind it is changing, it means that emojis are being used like a real language, which should always evolve. Though it gets frustrating at times as emojis together look mysterious to me when I cannot decipher them, it also challenges me to try and learn this new god of language. I am calling it god of language because anyone of any linguistic culture and any age can use it smoothly. It is good news for the older generations that the emoji language has become so ubiquitous now that there is emojipedia and emoji dictionary to help people like me out.

Unlike emojis stickers and gifs are less shady. They mean what they stand for. I love cats in real life and like many people I love the cat stickers and gifs. My most favourite gif is this one with the sunglasses. The sass the cat has cannot be compared to anything. I use this gif a lot when chatting with my friends.

I am hopelessly a cat person and so my favourite sticker is also a cat sticker and that is simons cat. The big googly eyes of the cat always make me feel relaxed and it gives a feeling of cuddliness too.

^{screenshot of Simons catfrom Facebook messenger}

In Steemit also, we see countless times members and even steemcurator 01 and steemcurator 02 using emoji or symbols. For example the dolphins are symbol of achievement for the participants.

The stickers, gifs and emojis will stay for a long time hopefully, and probably they will not be a dead language like hieroglyphs as the emoji or stickers are paired with written form of language and so they can make the language function in a better way. Still, there is a pinch of mystery in the emoji language. The mystery will probably remain and probably many things will be left to our imagination even in future to create room for more thoughts.

Thank you @simonnwigwe for posting this contest. I enjoyed writing about this. I would also like to thank @patjewell for encouraging me to write through invitation.

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