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Your brain on emoji

nautil.us

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Re: Your brain on emoji

#81

Post by deathanatos »

paradox460 wrote: post #68
e40 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, in slack an emoji response doesn't need to be cleared (so it doesn't count toward a notification count). That is what got me on board.

And if you send a message that's only + , slack will use it as a reaction on the immediately preceding message

I do wish Slack would "target" the last message the moment one types the "+" though. There's a TOCTOU bug of sorts with the current setup where someone can ninja a reaction out from under you. Easily correctable … but can be momentarily confusing or comedic, depending on how much common sense the other end has.

Re: Your brain on emoji

#82

Post by deathanatos »

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")

Even "emoticons"¹, or pictographs replacing some text like ":-)" (which is how they were called before the west imported "emoji", largely because it showed up in phone IMEs after its inclusion in Unicode) were definitely a thing in the late 90s. I suspect AIM must have had them before Messenger, but frankly, I didn't think anyone actually used Messenger except maybe business types?

Everyone I seemed to know was on AIM, with a few odd exceptions on Yahoo, if they were normal. If they were more nerdy, IRC, but that was text based. (Though some clients would still translate certain text sequences into pictures. I'm pretty sure, e.g., Trillian could/would, but I don't remember when I adopted it. But it could have been earlier than 2003.)

¹The picture version. As I recall the usage of this word in the late 90s/early '00s, it could mean either ":-)" as text, or the pictogram version thereof, largely because clients at the time would just convert between the two freely. One end might send text, but the receiving client would pictogram it.

Re: Your brain on emoji

#83

Post by numpad0 »

nine_k wrote: post #37
aidenn0 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The invention in Japan, Europe, and the US of smileys was relatively concurrent, which makes sense because by the late 90s, text-art faces (e.g. ":-)" "(^_^)") were prevalent.

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.

Yeah, that table in the link contain 176 characters that begins with weather symbols, of which five are faces in second to last row - nine if I include snowman, googly eyes(Slack/GitHub "ack" icon), dog and cat faces. That's mere 3%(5%) of already small set, vs page after pages of trivially distinct human flesh in Apple Emoji.

Re: Your brain on emoji

#84

Post by eonwe »

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")…

On chat applications: In Finland no one used AIM and everyone used messenger.

I suspect this was the norm also elsewhere in Europe. I am talking about Messenger 4.6 that came built in with windows xp and its later versions, not the business version.

Re: Your brain on emoji

#85

Post by computerfriend »

thrashh wrote: post #70
hammock wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>FireFox settings should not be showing a sad-face emoji just because it's not my default browser. The irony of using the normative "should" to project your preferences onto Firefox, while expressing a desire that Firefox not do so on you. Also - what about iPhones stubbornly showing green texts from Android messagers? That's not even "I'm sad you're using Android." It's more a passive-aggressive "I'm going to degrad…

I mean iPhones do it purposely to make people buy iPhones. And it works. Apple is full of marketing geniuses. They’re maybe using a lot of dark patterns but they’re raking in profit.

iMessage itself is a feature that makes people want to buy iPhones (maybe). The colour of the text bubble is not.

Re: Your brain on emoji

#86

Post by computerfriend »

hammock wrote: post #45
JohnMakin wrote: post #31

Emojis in written text can lose their meaning in translation. Your intended meaning may not be what your audience understands, but I guess that’s inherent in most communication. I had a bunch of russian coworkers once, and one of them would constantly type “)))” any time I asked him a question. I thought it was some weird cyrillic keyboard quirk and never paid it any mind, until I learned it’s the approximate russian…

))) is just a beaming smile... derived from :) but without the eyes. Not exclusively Russian Separately, I remember years ago doing social media competitive audits and someone saw >>>>>> in there and thought it was errant text. E.g. "Taco Bell >>>>>>>". Of course what it means is Taco Bell is better than everything

Git conflict emoji.

Re: Your brain on emoji

#87

Post by computerfriend »

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.

I also thought it was an Eastern European thing. Would be nice to see a map of prevalence of this trend.

Re: Your brain on emoji

#88

Post by pavlov »

jodrellblank wrote: post #65
exac wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at the re-sale market for used iPhones. Youth do not want to be caught dead with Android phones.

The claim was that Apple is giving someone a degraded experience. How is "Android user doesn't like their Android phone" evidence of a degraded experience for an iPhone user?

The reason why kids in USA don’t want Android isn’t the phones themselves but the way their messages get presented by Apple’s software. No teenager wants to be flagged as poor to their peers by a bright green bubble.

Imagine if Microsoft had done this 20+ years ago when they were on top. All emails sent from a Mac would be displayed in magenta Comic Sans when opened on Windows. Wouldn’t that have been a blatantly anticompetitive move to make Macs look worse to business users?

Re: Your brain on emoji

#89

Post by computerfriend »

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?

I don't hate emoji (any more -- the article also describes my own experiences warming up to them).

I'd hate to see them on HN though. :(

Re: Your brain on emoji

#90

Post by Ennea »

eonwe wrote: post #84
deathanatos wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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")…

On chat applications: In Finland no one used AIM and everyone used messenger. I suspect this was the norm also elsewhere in Europe. I am talking about Messenger 4.6 that came built in with windows xp and its later versions, not the business version.

The most popular choice in Germany used to be ICQ, at least based on my own friend group and various conversations I've had over the years.
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