Your brain on emoji
nautil.us
Your brain on emoji
1–10 of 184 posts
Re: Your brain on emoji
#2I'm surprised to see the spread of emoji attributed to Microsoft in the initial sentences. It's possible that the author may be referring to the smiley faces in extended character pages, or maybe Webdings, but I generally associate the term 'emoji' with Unicode characters specifically, which I believe to have been petitioned by Google and popularized by Apple.
Interesting article either way.
Re: Your brain on emoji
#3I'm surprised to see the spread of emoji attributed to Microsoft in the initial sentences. It's possible that the author may be referring to the smiley faces in extended character pages, or maybe Webdings, but I generally associate the term 'emoji' with Unicode characters specifically, which I believe to have been petitioned by Google and popularized by Apple. Interesting article either way.
I think it's a little unfair to attribute it to Microsoft and MSN Messenger as it was a concept that originated on Japanese phones AFAIK.
Also Microsoft's emojis are currently the worst by a mile out of the big tech companies.
Re: Your brain on emoji
#4I was a hold-out for quite a while, like the author, because they felt very twee. The one that convinced me though was the thumbs-up emoji, which can be an entire reply to an email or text, that says "I've read this, and we don't need to continue the conversation", with undertones of agreement or a thank-you. Somehow single-word replies like "Gotcha" or "Yes" felt too curt, and anything longer invited further discussion where I didn't want any. I don't really use any other emojis though - I love using language too much, and all of the others feel like I can express myself better through words.
Re: Your brain on emoji
#5This link in the article about the history of the :-) emoticon -- proposed by Scott Fahlman of Carnegie Mellon on September 19, 1982 -- is really fascinating:
Re: Your brain on emoji
#6Oh my, Internet, what have you done with smileys ;(
Re: Your brain on emoji
#7It boggles my mind that emoji can be used in an URL.
Re: Your brain on emoji
#8Did you know ? Eastern europeans end words (without space) with singles characters "(" and ")" to indicate full smileys. Only themselves understand each others and they dont tell anyone about it)))
Re: Your brain on emoji
#9I'm surprised to see the spread of emoji attributed to Microsoft in the initial sentences. It's possible that the author may be referring to the smiley faces in extended character pages, or maybe Webdings, but I generally associate the term 'emoji' with Unicode characters specifically, which I believe to have been petitioned by Google and popularized by Apple. Interesting article either way.
MSN messenger had a ton of emojis and at the time (around 2000), in my experience, they were used on messenger a lot more than on AIM or ICQ. This is, of course, in the west.
As far as Unicode, the impetus for inclusion, while petitioned by Google, was at least officially due to enabling compatibility with Japanese phones where emoji were also quite popular.
Re: Your brain on emoji
#10I'm surprised to see the spread of emoji attributed to Microsoft in the initial sentences. It's possible that the author may be referring to the smiley faces in extended character pages, or maybe Webdings, but I generally associate the term 'emoji' with Unicode characters specifically, which I believe to have been petitioned by Google and popularized by Apple. Interesting article either way.
That first paragraph really put me off the article to be honest. Why read an article on emoji by someone who doesn't know what emoji are?
At the same time, I do realise "emoji" is now often being used as a generic term that encompasses both true emoji (unicode-based) and general emoticon images.