Blog 8:
On October 15th, one of my classmates, Hannah, presented her Each One Teach One assignment where she researched the history and pro/cons of emoticons.
Emoticons were discovered in 1982 by Scott Fahlman. It started with the simple “:-)” to represent a smiling face, and a “:-(” to represent a frowning face. The smiling face was for a humorous post and the frowning face meant a serious post on message boards. After the discovery of these faces, emoticons went viral on message boards everywhere.
In 1999, the first ever “emoji” was created by a Japanese artist. Later on, in 2010, Unicode (a system that unifies encoding throughout different platforms) adopted emojis, and a year later, Apple created an emoji keyboard for their products. Now, Apple products get new emojis every year, with the latest ones featuring a black cat, teapot, bubble tea, the transgender flag, and more.
Emoticons have many benefits. Emoticons can help convey the user’s emotions, and allows for a better understanding of a meaning behind a sentence. It prevents other people from taking a happy message in a mean context. It can also be understood despite languages, which is very important for global communication. Emoticons are quick and easy to use, and can convey a message faster than typing one out. It also makes messages and posts more personal; sending a message with an emoji usually resonates with someone more than without the emoji.
However, emoticons have many downsides too. They are seen as very unprofessional, and are usually not socially allowed in places of work or serious matter. Emoticons and emojis can also be very misleading, as certain emojis now have different interpretations rather than what they actually are. For example, the goat emoji can be used to refer to the Greatest Of All Time, or the G.O.A.T.
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