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Your brain on emoji

nautil.us

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Re: Your brain on emoji

#121

Post by layer8 »

kalleboo wrote: post #114
nine_k wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emoji specifically (絵文字, where 絵 means "picture") are a Japanese invention. They were / are custom pictures, initially monochrome, which Japanese mobile phones allowed to insert into texts. See https://www.global.ntt/contributing-society-emoji.html They are not the "smiley" / "emoticon" character art stuff like :-) or =ò.ó= or whatever.

Web forums like UBB already had what we called "smilies" in 1998 with graphical emotive faces you could include in your posts, so that concept of image emotes predates the Japanese emoji. Making them part of the OS and character set so they could be used anywhere and not just on a web forum was what made them the emoji we know today, and what caused them to catch on. But now services like Slack and Mastodon have what…

You’re repeating the word “emote”, but “emoji” has no etymological connection to “emote” or “emotion”, it just means “picture character” in Japanese.

Re: Your brain on emoji

#122

Post by madeofpalk »

jodrellblank wrote: post #44

I'm starting to find them emotionally manipulative in a bad way. FireFox settings should not be showing a sad-face emoji just because it's not my default browser. Especially when I'm using BrowserTamer[1] to intercept all URL launches so I can feed a few work URLs to Edge and Chrome, and FireFox as the default for everything else, so it effectively is my default browser. It's not the only piece of software behaving s…

That's not emojis being emotionall manipulative - that's Firefox being poor copywriters

Re: Your brain on emoji

#123

Post by layer8 »

xdennis wrote: post #94
nine_k wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emoji specifically (絵文字, where 絵 means "picture") are a Japanese invention. They were / are custom pictures, initially monochrome, which Japanese mobile phones allowed to insert into texts. See https://www.global.ntt/contributing-society-emoji.html They are not the "smiley" / "emoticon" character art stuff like :-) or =ò.ó= or whatever.

You're using the Japanese term to obscure. Emoticons were invented first and they are both character based and image based. Later, people started using the term "emojis" for image emoticons and now some people say only text emoticons are real emoticons.

Just for reference, the Japanese term for emoticons is kaomoji (“face characters”), distinct from emoji.

Re: Your brain on emoji

#124

Post by mcpackieh »

deathanatos wrote: post #82
WaffleIronMaker wrote: post #2

I'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.

Because it's wrong. Emoji is a Japanese word, which is the biggest hint they didn't come from Microsoft. (And yes, its a specific subset of Unicode characters, though that proper use is getting diluted by people using it to refer to any and every inline pictograph in text, even non-Unicode ones, a use more similar to "emoticon" from the 90s… that word seems to have faded into obscurity, largely supplanted by "emoji")…

> Emoji is a Japanese word, which is the biggest hint they didn't come from Microsoft. (And yes, its a specific subset of Unicode characters, though that proper use is getting diluted by people using it to refer to any and every inline pictograph in text, even non-Unicode ones,

Emoji as originally created/used in Japan were not Unicode, Unicode emoji only came many years later, so referring to non-unicode emoji as emoji isn't improper and doesn't dilute the term.

Re: Your brain on emoji

#125

Post by [deleted] »

noman-land wrote: post #51
lapcat wrote: post #38

I quit using emoji entirely almost 5 years ago, though I do continue to use a few simple emoticons. https://twitter.com/lapcatsoftware/status/104722329811389645... My reasons: "There's a method to my madness. You see, gifs are trivially infinitely extensible and backward compatible. Whereas each new emoji requires an addition to Unicode and software updates. And the demand for more emoji is insatiable. That system is…

I think the big difference between gif and emoji is that you need to see a gif to know what it represents.

[deleted]

Re: Your brain on emoji

#126

Post by ttoinou »

sznio wrote: post #108
agubelu wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why eastern europeans in particular? Is it somehow related to slavic languages? Now I'm curious

It's the Russian keyboard layout that makes ":" difficult to type. In Poland we just use the US keyboard layout so that's not a problem. I assume it's similar for other non-cyrillic slavic languages.

Weird, I've seen poles do that

Re: Your brain on emoji

#127

Post by ttoinou »

Tenoke wrote: post #32
agubelu wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why eastern europeans in particular? Is it somehow related to slavic languages? Now I'm curious

I'm guessing they are overgeneralizing since I'm a Bulgarian and I haven't really seen anyone do that.

Yeah sorry I meant far-eastern europeans

Re: Your brain on emoji

#128

Post by layer8 »

labster wrote: post #29

I’m starting to think that Hacker News is on the wrong side of history on this one. Without the emotional channel, we make more misunderstandings, which leads to more hostile posts. Emoji are becoming a permanent part of written language. I don’t want to see a post full of emoji either, but perhaps a filter that allows one emoji per 20 words would work. Perhaps using a font with black line or grayscale emoji?

You can use emoticons or kaomoji perfectly fine if you want. ^_–

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: Your brain on emoji

#129

Post by yreg »

jodrellblank wrote: post #44

I'm starting to find them emotionally manipulative in a bad way. FireFox settings should not be showing a sad-face emoji just because it's not my default browser. Especially when I'm using BrowserTamer[1] to intercept all URL launches so I can feed a few work URLs to Edge and Chrome, and FireFox as the default for everything else, so it effectively is my default browser. It's not the only piece of software behaving s…

I recently encountered a payment app at a restaurant that had a slider for adjusting the tip. There was a smiley face above the slider and it cried unless you set the tip to over 10%.

(While usually expected, it's not socially mandatory to give out tips in my country.)

Re: Your brain on emoji

#130

Post by layer8 »

frereubu wrote: post #4

I 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 discuss…

I find the thumbs-up emoji to be too ambiguous, because visually it can mean either an approval or an encouragement, but it’s often used just as an acknowledgment. However I’d like to express an acknowledgment without implying an approval.

Besides, as the sibling notes, it can be slightly negative, because a mere thumbs-up means that you didn’t find it worth to bother typing some actual text.

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