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Speaker 1: Texts of technology with tech Stuff from hastaff works dot com.

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Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I am your host,

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Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland, Senior writer or how stuff works dot com.

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Speaker 1: And today I thought i'd cover a pair of related topics,

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Speaker 1: things that many of us have had plenty of experience with,

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Speaker 1: maybe don't know so much about when you get down

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Speaker 1: to it, and those would be emoticons and emoji. Now,

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Speaker 1: in case you are not aware, those are the little

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Speaker 1: pictograms or pictures that we send through various digital messaging

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Speaker 1: services and online social media in order to get certain

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Speaker 1: meanings and emotional intent across to one another. There are

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Speaker 1: lots of simple examples, such as the pairing of the

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Speaker 1: colon punctuation and closed parentheses, which makes a sideways smiley face,

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Speaker 1: though I should point out some cultures will flip this

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Speaker 1: around and do an open parentheses and then a colon

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Speaker 1: to be a smiley face which is flipped on the

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Speaker 1: other side. But honestly, that's just playing madness when you

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Speaker 1: get down to it. And there are more complicated versions,

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Speaker 1: like the emoji that seemed to cover very specific moods

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Speaker 1: or thoughts or concepts we humans have taken to communicating

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Speaker 1: through these pictograms in ways beyond punctuating a short message.

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Speaker 1: And I'm sure you've seen some messages that consist only

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Speaker 1: of those pictograms, and it ends up being your job

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Speaker 1: to kind of suss out what does that message actually mean.

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Speaker 1: I've played that game recently myself, where everyone was using

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Speaker 1: emoji to describe a movie, either by title or by

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Speaker 1: the plot of the film, and then it was everyone

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Speaker 1: else's job to guess what the film is. And it's

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Speaker 1: a fun game to play. You think of a film

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Speaker 1: that maybe is is pretty popular, like say Wizard of Oz,

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Speaker 1: and then you try and describe it using only emoji,

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Speaker 1: and it's everyone else's job to try and figure out

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Speaker 1: what film are you talking about? And some of them

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Speaker 1: are much easier than others. And again it depends on

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Speaker 1: whether or not you're describing the movie or the movie's title,

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Speaker 1: because sometimes the title of a film has very little

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Speaker 1: to do with what actually happens in the movie. But

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Speaker 1: these sort of games are becoming more and more commonplace.

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Speaker 1: But where did the idea for emoticons and emoji even

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Speaker 1: come from? Well, between the two, emoticons really predate emoji.

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Speaker 1: They actually predate emoji by a couple of decades at

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Speaker 1: least in the digital age. But obviously humans have been

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Speaker 1: using pictures to communicate since prehistoric times. Now that goes

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Speaker 1: well beyond the scope of this podcast. I know that

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Speaker 1: I like to give the history of stuff, and often

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Speaker 1: I would go way, way way back in order to

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Speaker 1: start with the foundation. But even I am not going

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Speaker 1: to go into talking about caves in ancient France that had,

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Speaker 1: you know, prehistoric paintings on the walls. That that goes

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Speaker 1: beyond even the scope of tech stuff. So perhaps we

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Speaker 1: can get one of the other shows at some point

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Speaker 1: to talk about the long history of using pictures as

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Speaker 1: a form of communication, and I can just stick strictly

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Speaker 1: to digital communication for the for the majority of this show. However,

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Speaker 1: the emoticon itself doesn't date back to ancient times because

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Speaker 1: processing power back then was pretty bad and it just

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Speaker 1: you know, you couldn't even really get a bit together

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Speaker 1: with the computers of the prehistoric age. However, there was

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Speaker 1: some debate about when it first appeared, and and some

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Speaker 1: people suggest that it first showed up in the seventeenth century,

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Speaker 1: as in the sixteen hundreds. Now I know what you're thinking, Jonathan,

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Speaker 1: You're saying frownie face. No one had a computer or

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Speaker 1: a smartphone, or a tablet or a cell phone in

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Speaker 1: the sixteen hundreds, extra angry face and You're right. But

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Speaker 1: a twenty one century publicity manager for the University of

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Speaker 1: Chicago Press named Levi Stall discovered what at first appeared

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Speaker 1: to be an earlier intentional emoticon. Now Stall was perusing

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Speaker 1: poetry written by Robert Herrick. Herrick was born in fifteen

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Speaker 1: ninety one, and as a young man he became one

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Speaker 1: of Ben Johnson's followers. He also took Holy orders in

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Speaker 1: six three and became a cleric essentially, but he is

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Speaker 1: chiefly known as a poet, with his most well known

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Speaker 1: work being her Sperities, or the Works Both Human and

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Speaker 1: Divine of Robert Herrick. One of his most famous poems

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Speaker 1: is to the Virgins to make much of Time, which

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Speaker 1: begins with the lines gather ye rosebuds, while ye may

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Speaker 1: old time is still a flying and the same flower

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Speaker 1: that smiles today tomorrow will be dying. Really cheerful stuff.

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Speaker 1: But that's not the poem that specifically caught Levi stalls attention.

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Speaker 1: The one that he was interested in was a poem

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Speaker 1: titled to a fortune, and that was first published in

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Speaker 1: sixty and the original publication actually contains the instance that

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Speaker 1: Stall said this might be an early emoticon. The first

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Speaker 1: two lines of that poem read as follows, tumble me

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Speaker 1: down and I will sit upon my ruins smiling yet.

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Speaker 1: But that smiling yet is a parenthetical. It is enclosed

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Speaker 1: within parentheses. So upon my runs, smiling yet is in parentheses,

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Speaker 1: and just before the final parentheses the closed parentheses is

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Speaker 1: a colon, And so it looks like one of those

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Speaker 1: little smiling emoticons that you would have seen in text

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Speaker 1: messages for the last several years. Colon, closed parentheses, smiley

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Speaker 1: face right. And as I mentioned, this was in the

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Speaker 1: sixteen hundreds. So Stall's reaction was, hey, this might actually

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Speaker 1: be a real instance of an emoticon, because the words

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Speaker 1: immediately preceding the symbols are smiling yet. So maybe this

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Speaker 1: is really a clever use of typography where the author

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Speaker 1: was intentionally including the colon and the closed parentheses to

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Speaker 1: indicate a smile following the words smiling yet. So this

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Speaker 1: could be a very clever show of humor. However, that

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Speaker 1: particular interpretation has been disputed by many scholars who point

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Speaker 1: out that not only were there other instances of the

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Speaker 1: colon parentheses throughout his works that had nothing to do

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Speaker 1: with smiling, like they were paired with words that had

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Speaker 1: no connection to the concept of smiling, but also punctuation

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Speaker 1: in the seventeenth century had not really reached the level

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Speaker 1: of guidelines yet. It was pretty chaotic, it was sporadic,

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Speaker 1: No one had really standardized it, so it's more likely

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Speaker 1: this was not an example of any sort of meaningful

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Speaker 1: expression or some sort of visual joke on top of

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Speaker 1: the layer of poetry. In fact, there are plenty of

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Speaker 1: examples of writers from the seventeenth century using unnecessary punctuation

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Speaker 1: before closing out of parentheses. There are other examples of

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Speaker 1: odd punctuation that met no accepted standard that arose during

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Speaker 1: the same time period, such as a comma and a dash.

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Speaker 1: There was no need for a dash after a comma,

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Speaker 1: but there were a lot of writers who were including

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Speaker 1: this because there had not been a widely adopted standard

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Speaker 1: in place. So it appears this smiley face was more

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Speaker 1: of a coincidence and not actually a sly jest. And

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Speaker 1: there's actually another example that predates Herrick's poem by a

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Speaker 1: few years and this would be the first example of

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Speaker 1: an emoji, not an emoticon. A seventeenth century notary in

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Speaker 1: Slovakia apparently used a little drawing of a face kind

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Speaker 1: of similar to a smiley face, although the mouth did

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Speaker 1: not have a big curve to it, so it's not

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Speaker 1: like a big smile. It was more like a circle

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Speaker 1: like your traditional smiley face, two dots for eyes, and

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Speaker 1: a little line that perhaps was a slight smile, but

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Speaker 1: not an exaggerated one. The notary in question was yawn

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Speaker 1: a lot of slides, and honestly, i'd probably just refer

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Speaker 1: to this as a little smiley face, not even an emoji,

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Speaker 1: except for the fact that this was apparently to indicate

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Speaker 1: that the form he was notarizing met with his approval.

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Speaker 1: So it wasn't that he was just notarizing this form,

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Speaker 1: which was a town document for a little town in Slovakia,

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Speaker 1: but that he was also saying, I approve of this.

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Speaker 1: I'm not just notarizing it. I approve of it. And

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Speaker 1: in that case it was fulfilling a function that emoji's

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Speaker 1: many centuries later would continue to fulfill. So you could

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Speaker 1: argue that perhaps this instant in early sixteen hundreds was

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Speaker 1: the first use of an emoji. But if Herrick's poetry

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Speaker 1: or Slovakian document wasn't really the origin of the emoticon,

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Speaker 1: what was What could have been a speech from the

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Speaker 1: sixteenth President of the United States back in eighteen sixty two. Again,

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Speaker 1: that's what someone thought might be possible. They were looking

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Speaker 1: at a transcript of one of Abraham Lincoln's speeches, and

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Speaker 1: the passage from that speech reads like this, fellow citizens,

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Speaker 1: I believe there is no precedent for my appearing before

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Speaker 1: you on this occasion. Open bracket, applause, closed bracket. But

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Speaker 1: it is also true that there is no precedent for

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Speaker 1: you being here yourselves a open parentheses, applause and laughter,

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Speaker 1: semi colon closed parentheses, and I offer in justification, and

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Speaker 1: so on. The speech goes on. But that semi colon

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Speaker 1: closed parentheses pairing looks like a winky face what we

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Speaker 1: would usually use as a hey, do you get it? Wink? Well?

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Speaker 1: Could that be the intent? I mean, the phrase that

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Speaker 1: immediately precedes it says applause and laughter. It might just

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Speaker 1: be a sly reference on the part of the speech

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Speaker 1: writer to say, look, how clever I am. We're gonna

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Speaker 1: pause for applause and laughter winky face because I'm so funny.

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Speaker 1: So it could have been an inside joke. I mean, obviously,

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Speaker 1: no one who's hearing the speech would have seen this.

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Speaker 1: This was something that was written down on paper. But

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Speaker 1: first of all, I hate stage directions and speeches like this.

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Speaker 1: This is just commentary on Jonathan's part. I hate stage

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Speaker 1: directions and speeches because it he suppose, is what an

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Speaker 1: audience's reaction to your speech is going to be. So

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Speaker 1: pause for applause or pause for laughter, or to phrases

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Speaker 1: I hate to see in speeches. It is a lot

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Speaker 1: of hubrists to assume that you're going to get applause

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Speaker 1: or laughter at those parts. Now, if you do get

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Speaker 1: those responses, you need to know how to ride them

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Speaker 1: out when you're giving a public presentation, so that you

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Speaker 1: can wait until it crests and as it begins to

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Speaker 1: die down, you can pick back up with your speech

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Speaker 1: and people will not miss what you have to say.

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Speaker 1: But there's nothing more awkward then watching a public presentation

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Speaker 1: where clearly there was a stage direction to pause for

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Speaker 1: some audience reaction and there's no reaction. It's just you know,

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Speaker 1: you might as well have that cricket sound effect playing

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Speaker 1: in the background terribly awkward. So, if in fact was

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Speaker 1: an intentional emoticon, it was incredibly bold to suggest that

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Speaker 1: I am so clever that clear people are going to

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Speaker 1: laugh winky face. More importantly, most scholars think it probably

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Speaker 1: was either a typo or it was a late example

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Speaker 1: of that wanton punctuation I had mentioned about the seventeenth century. Uh,

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Speaker 1: it may very well have just been one of those

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Speaker 1: elements where that was kind of a a habit on

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Speaker 1: behalf of the person who was writing the speech. Not

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Speaker 1: an indicator that this was an emoticon, but rather when

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Speaker 1: they would close out of parentheses, they would put in

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Speaker 1: this semicolon and then close parentheses, because that's the kind

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Speaker 1: of stuff we used to see a couple hundred years earlier.

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Speaker 1: The the point being that we cannot be sure this

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Speaker 1: was an intentional effort to put in some sort of

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Speaker 1: emotional intent within a written document, although it doesn't stop

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Speaker 1: people from sometimes citing it as one of the earliest

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Speaker 1: uses of emoticons. Now there is at least one nineteenth

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Speaker 1: century occurrence that was clearly intentional. It really was an emoticon,

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Speaker 1: not necessarily the way we use them today, but that

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Speaker 1: is exactly what it was, because we're told that's what

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Speaker 1: it is. This was back in one there was a

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Speaker 1: satirical magazine in the United States called Puck. Puck was

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Speaker 1: essentially what the Onion is today. It was satire and

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Speaker 1: it was meant to poke fun at different institutions and traditions.

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Speaker 1: So this was fully with that intent. There was a

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Speaker 1: piece titled typographical Art and it stated that the printing

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Speaker 1: press was now capable of creating expressions that rivaled those

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Speaker 1: made by cartoonists. This was sort of like any other

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Speaker 1: article in a satire. It was meant to make a

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Speaker 1: ridiculous claim and then provide evidence that in no way

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Speaker 1: really supports that claim. It's very flimsy evidence, but that's

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Speaker 1: where the humor is right. So specifically, article states, we

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Speaker 1: wish it to be distinctly understood that the letter press

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Speaker 1: department of this paper is not going to be trampled

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Speaker 1: on by any tyrannical crowd of artists in existence. We

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Speaker 1: mean to let the public see that we can lay

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Speaker 1: out in our own typographical line all the cartoonists that

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Speaker 1: ever walked for fear of startling the public. We will

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Speaker 1: give only a small specimen of the artistic achievements within

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Speaker 1: our grasp by way of a first installment. The following

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Speaker 1: are from studies and passions and emotions. Then underneath this

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Speaker 1: little paragraph there's a sequence of four different images that

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Speaker 1: are made up of letter press symbols like parentheses and dashes,

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Speaker 1: but they are oriented so that you can make vertical faces.

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Speaker 1: They're not turned on their side the way emoticons would

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Speaker 1: be later on. They're up and down, not left and right. Uh,

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Speaker 1: and you know, they just make very primitive looking face

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Speaker 1: says Underneath each face was a labeled to express what

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Speaker 1: the emotion behind that face was supposed to be. So

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Speaker 1: you had things like um, joy, melancholy, indifference, and astonishment,

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Speaker 1: and it was all just very simple shapes. The joke

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Speaker 1: being that the people in the letter press department are saying,

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Speaker 1: we can show off just as much artistic integrity as

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Speaker 1: your greatest cartoonists. So don't think you can walk all

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Speaker 1: over us, because our job is to set letters within

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Speaker 1: a printing press in order to create these copies of

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Speaker 1: the magazine. So it's a joke just saying we can

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Speaker 1: do what you can do. But clearly the actual evidence

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Speaker 1: was uh, severely lacking as far as subtlety or art

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Speaker 1: is concerned. Those images do not in a regular use

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Speaker 1: at this point. Remember this is predating things like typewriters.

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Speaker 1: This is still putting movable type onto a press and

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Speaker 1: then closing the press down. So typewriters and and the such,

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Speaker 1: we're not really accessible by your general public at this time.

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Speaker 1: So what about the smiley face itself? When did that

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Speaker 1: become a symbol for happiness? Despite these early examples, it

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Speaker 1: had not reached widespread adoption, and it appeared pretty late

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Speaker 1: on the scene. It didn't happen the way it was

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Speaker 1: shown in the film Forrest Gump. So there was no

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Speaker 1: cross country jogger involved. There were no giant puddles of mud,

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Speaker 1: there was no passing truck to splash anybody. None of

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Speaker 1: that had anything to do with the invention of the

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Speaker 1: traditional smiley face. That actually came out of a pr campaign.

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Speaker 1: There was an add creator by the name of Harvey

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Speaker 1: ross Ball, and he designed the smiley face. He was

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Speaker 1: working on a campaign to help improve employee morale at

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Speaker 1: an insurance company in the wake of several tumultuous at

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Speaker 1: positions and mergers that the company had just been through,

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Speaker 1: so employees were feeling stressed out, frustrated, nervous about their fate,

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Speaker 1: and the company wanted to try and turn things around

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Speaker 1: by creating a campaign of positivity. It took Ball about

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Speaker 1: ten minutes to come up with the smiley face design,

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Speaker 1: which included the yellow background, the slightly strange oval like

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Speaker 1: eyes like they're not quite the same size and orientation,

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Speaker 1: and then the not completely perfect, uh, parabolic arc that

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Speaker 1: is the smile. There's a little bit of imperfection there

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Speaker 1: that's purposefully put there, and it adds to the charm.

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Speaker 1: All of that was Ball's design. It took him about

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Speaker 1: ten minutes. He was paid the princely sum of forty

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Speaker 1: five dollars for his design, and neither he nor State

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Speaker 1: Mutual Life Assurance Company bothered to copyright or trademark the design. Uh.

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Speaker 1: The rest of the story ends up being kind of

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Speaker 1: less happy, but you know, let's tell it anyway. Because

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Speaker 1: there was no copyright or trademark protection on the design,

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Speaker 1: it was free for anyone to grab and use for themselves.

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Speaker 1: There's nothing to prevent them from doing this. And in

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Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies, two brothers named Murray and Bernard Spain

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Speaker 1: decided that they wanted to use this image. They appropriated

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Speaker 1: it and they used it in their own business. They

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Speaker 1: were owners of a couple of different Hallmark card shops

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Speaker 1: in the Philadelphia area, so they took the design and

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Speaker 1: they added a phrase have a happy day, not have

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Speaker 1: a nice day, but have a happy day, and they

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Speaker 1: added that to the smiley face, and then they applied

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Speaker 1: for a copyright, which they received, So they got a

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Speaker 1: copyright that was on a design that in part was

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Speaker 1: not theirs, that wasn't their creation, So they were able

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Speaker 1: to copyright this design and use it for themselves. They

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Speaker 1: also made a mint off of it because they were

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Speaker 1: selling buttons and cards and shirts all with this logo

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Speaker 1: and slogan on it, and it was incredibly popular during

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Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies. Meanwhile, over in Europe, in France to

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Speaker 1: be specific, there was a journalist named Franklin lou Frani

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Speaker 1: who registered the smiley face mark for commercial use in Europe.

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Speaker 1: He would use it to indicate news stories with an

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Speaker 1: uplifting tone in a paper in France called Francis. He

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Speaker 1: also was able to leverage this into a merchandizing boom.

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Speaker 1: He called his design smiley, and he was selling all

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Speaker 1: sorts of stuff like T shirts throughout Europe with the

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Speaker 1: the image on it. One could argue, however, that his

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Speaker 1: use of the smiley face to indicate items that were

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Speaker 1: of good news in papers was similar to what emoticons

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Speaker 1: would be used for today, So perhaps this counts as

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Speaker 1: an early emoji. But let's get to the official birth

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Speaker 1: of the emoticon itself as we think of it today.

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Speaker 1: This actually dates to the nineteen e e d s

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Speaker 1: in a computer lab at Carnegie Melon University. It's amazing

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Speaker 1: that we can actually track down the birth of the

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Speaker 1: emoticon as it is used today. Often these sort of

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Speaker 1: things end up being buried in legend and lore, and

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Speaker 1: we never really understand where something came from. It just

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Speaker 1: we can kind of point when it became popular, but

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Speaker 1: anything before that tends to be a mystery. Not so

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Speaker 1: in this case, because things that existed online have a

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Speaker 1: habit of sticking around, even if that online was just

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Speaker 1: online in the case of a of a local network

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Speaker 1: and not the Internet at large. Because we're talking about

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Speaker 1: most universities didn't have access to the Internet. Carnegie Melon

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Speaker 1: is probably an exception to that. But this was not

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Speaker 1: a Internet meme. This was very local on a bulletin

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Speaker 1: board system. So we can pinpoint the date of emoticon

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Speaker 1: creation two September nineteen ninety two. So here's what was

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Speaker 1: happening computer science students and other students who had become

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Speaker 1: interested in computers. Uh, we're using a school electron bullet

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Speaker 1: electronic bulletin board system or BBS to post messages to

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Speaker 1: one another. So this was a predecessor to the news

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Speaker 1: groups and forums that you would find over the Internet,

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Speaker 1: but this would be a decade before the World Wide

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Speaker 1: Web ever existed. To access a BBS, typically you would

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Speaker 1: use a dial up modem and you would call a

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Speaker 1: phone number that would be connected to a specific computer

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Speaker 1: that hosted the bulletin board system. Some of these bulletin

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Speaker 1: board systems could only have one connection at a time,

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Speaker 1: so you might try and call and get a busy

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Speaker 1: signal and you'd have to wait and try and call later.

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Speaker 1: You also had a lot of bolletin board systems that

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Speaker 1: tried to regulate traffic by charging per minute of use,

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Speaker 1: and that way you could cut down on someone just

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Speaker 1: hogging the bulletin board system just for him or herself.

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Speaker 1: But it was again like a precursor to what the

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Speaker 1: Internet would be. It was local, it was not the

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Speaker 1: entire network of networks. There was, however, a different problem

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Speaker 1: besides just how do you access this information? And that

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Speaker 1: problem was in miscommunication. It's a problem that still persists

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Speaker 1: to this day. In fact, as has always been the case,

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Speaker 1: some folks would post messages or responses that were intended

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Speaker 1: to be a joke, to be humorous. But when you

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Speaker 1: just post text, as all of you know, you have

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Speaker 1: no benefit of tone or facial expression or body language.

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Speaker 1: None of those other elements of communication are present, and

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Speaker 1: so sometimes it's difficult to suss out which messages are

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Speaker 1: being cheeky or humorous versus which ones are being serious

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Speaker 1: or sincere or outright insulting on purpose. It could be

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Speaker 1: hard to determine what is what. That would lead to

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Speaker 1: misunderstanding and misinterpretations. Sometimes that would completely derail any sort

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Speaker 1: of discussion about whatever the topic was until someone was

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Speaker 1: able to get everything back on track. So, in other words,

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Speaker 1: it was creating a frustrating environment in which time would

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Speaker 1: be wasted on stuff that really wasn't that important. And

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Speaker 1: that's when a student stepped in. Uh, it was the thirties,

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Speaker 1: thirty years old at the time. His name is Scott Falman,

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Speaker 1: and Scott Falman would come up with a solution to

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Speaker 1: this problem. Now. I'll talk more about that in just

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Speaker 1: a second, but first let's take a quick break to

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Speaker 1: thank our sponsor. Falman himself has said that he wasn't

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Speaker 1: the only person to suggest the use of some form

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Speaker 1: of indicator that showed intent, that showed emotional intent behind messages,

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Speaker 1: so that people could know how to interpret any given message,

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Speaker 1: particularly ones that are jokes, so they don't mistake it

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Speaker 1: for some sort of genuine request or statement. But there

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Speaker 1: was a group that had been advocating for some sort

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Speaker 1: of system that would either tell you a message was

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Speaker 1: serious or wasn't serious. According to Falman himself, about half

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Speaker 1: of the group were seriously suggesting that approach, and the

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Speaker 1: other half were kind of making a joke, thus illustrating

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Speaker 1: the need for the system in the first place, because

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Speaker 1: not even everybody who was saying we need this actually

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Speaker 1: meant it. Some of them were joking about it, so

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Speaker 1: I guess it was hard to tell since they hadn't

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Speaker 1: invented emoticons yet. There were several competing ideas that were

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Speaker 1: put forward to indicate tone and intent, and Falman was

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Speaker 1: the one who said that you should use two different

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Speaker 1: sets of marks to indicate what the message is all about.

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Speaker 1: So you would use a colon dash and closed parentheses

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Speaker 1: combination to indicate a joke that would be the smiley

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Speaker 1: face the sideway smiley face, or a colon dash open

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Speaker 1: parentheses to indicate a serious post that would be the

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Speaker 1: frownie face. It didn't take much time at all before

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Speaker 1: people started using the frownie face not to indicate serious posts,

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Speaker 1: but instead to indicate displeasure or frustration or anger. So

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Speaker 1: very quickly they began to appropriate that frownie face for

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Speaker 1: a purpose that was different than what was originally intended.

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Speaker 1: But it made sense because being serious doesn't necessarily mean

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Speaker 1: frownie face, right, You can be serious without being sad

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Speaker 1: or upset. Uh. They wanted to use that more as

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Speaker 1: an indicator that this is something that they do not like.

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Speaker 1: And so that's how that's how it came to mean

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Speaker 1: what it meant. It's the way people use It doesn't

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Speaker 1: matter what you intended when you created it, it matters

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Speaker 1: how the people used it. So creators in general find

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Speaker 1: this really frustrating when they make something and then their

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Speaker 1: audience ends up interpreting it differently or using it differently

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Speaker 1: than the way they had intended the creators. That is

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Speaker 1: the way the creators had intended, but that becomes the

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Speaker 1: right way to use it if enough people do it,

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Speaker 1: and that becomes the accepted way to use it. It

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Speaker 1: doesn't really matter what the creator originally intended. And it's

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Speaker 1: a very frustrating thing to come to grips with if

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Speaker 1: you are a creator, because you had a very specific

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Speaker 1: use case in mind when you were going about your

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Speaker 1: creative process, and then people go and muck it all

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Speaker 1: up by doing their own thing. Um, but that's life.

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Speaker 1: The system saw widespread adoption at Carnegie Melon and eventually

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Speaker 1: it found its way to bbs IS at other colleges

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Speaker 1: and universities and spread from there. So the concept of

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Speaker 1: emoticons was going strong and was going viral. Well before

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Speaker 1: the average person was using text messaging or instant messaging.

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Speaker 1: Not many people had any sort of cellular phone, and

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Speaker 1: text messages wasn't that really wasn't a thing yet, but

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Speaker 1: people were starting to pick up on this concept for

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Speaker 1: electronic messaging. Falman notes that many different variations of those

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Speaker 1: two basic smiles, including noseless versions, the ones that would

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Speaker 1: leave out the dash so you just have the colon,

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Speaker 1: and the open or closed parentheses. Those would appear over

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Speaker 1: the following years. Sometimes it was just an exercise someone

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Speaker 1: undertook to find clever ways to make recognizable images using

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Speaker 1: a limited set of typography, sort of as key art

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Speaker 1: in a way, and some people would just see what

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Speaker 1: sort of creative, complicated images they could make using all

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Speaker 1: these different set uh icons or set symbols. Falman noted

432
00:27:48,840 --> 00:27:51,840
Speaker 1: that the three sequences that were the most common that

433
00:27:51,960 --> 00:27:55,080
Speaker 1: stuck around, no matter what other ones people might create

434
00:27:55,280 --> 00:27:58,560
Speaker 1: were the smiley face, the frowny face, and the winky face,

435
00:27:58,880 --> 00:28:01,480
Speaker 1: which of course uses a semicolon instead of just a

436
00:28:01,560 --> 00:28:03,879
Speaker 1: colon in order to make it look like one of

437
00:28:03,920 --> 00:28:06,639
Speaker 1: the eyes is winking. Those were the three that he

438
00:28:06,720 --> 00:28:09,440
Speaker 1: said would get the most used, and other ones might

439
00:28:09,480 --> 00:28:12,440
Speaker 1: pop up now and again as a joke or as

440
00:28:12,480 --> 00:28:14,840
Speaker 1: a clever way of showing how someone had come up

441
00:28:14,880 --> 00:28:18,679
Speaker 1: with a new way to indicate a particular image, but

442
00:28:18,760 --> 00:28:23,080
Speaker 1: they didn't stick around as much as for the term

443
00:28:23,160 --> 00:28:29,240
Speaker 1: emoticon that rose sometime in the early to mid nineteen eighties,

444
00:28:29,320 --> 00:28:33,239
Speaker 1: but I could find no citation that pointed to the

445
00:28:33,320 --> 00:28:36,000
Speaker 1: origin of the word itself. Now we know that the

446
00:28:36,040 --> 00:28:40,600
Speaker 1: word comes from the combination of the words emotion and icon.

447
00:28:40,960 --> 00:28:44,600
Speaker 1: That's what emoticon comes from. It's the blending of those

448
00:28:44,600 --> 00:28:47,760
Speaker 1: two words. But we don't know who first coined it,

449
00:28:48,080 --> 00:28:50,920
Speaker 1: or at least I couldn't find any reputable source that

450
00:28:51,200 --> 00:28:56,960
Speaker 1: explained who first thought of calling these things emoticons. But

451
00:28:57,080 --> 00:29:00,400
Speaker 1: I think most people can easily understand how they come

452
00:29:00,440 --> 00:29:04,880
Speaker 1: in handy to help a recipient get the gist of

453
00:29:05,000 --> 00:29:10,080
Speaker 1: your intention. When you delivered a message, people understand the

454
00:29:10,200 --> 00:29:12,320
Speaker 1: use of it, even if they think that they're kind

455
00:29:12,320 --> 00:29:17,680
Speaker 1: of silly. You can't deny that it helps understand tone

456
00:29:18,120 --> 00:29:23,200
Speaker 1: and emotion if it's paired with another message. In person,

457
00:29:24,120 --> 00:29:27,360
Speaker 1: we use body language, we use facial expressions, we use

458
00:29:27,520 --> 00:29:31,160
Speaker 1: tone in order to get these subtle meanings across. So

459
00:29:31,240 --> 00:29:33,480
Speaker 1: we do this with our face to face communication all

460
00:29:33,480 --> 00:29:36,560
Speaker 1: the time. It only makes sense to create a system

461
00:29:36,720 --> 00:29:41,800
Speaker 1: to incorporate that in our textual communication, Otherwise we lose

462
00:29:41,880 --> 00:29:45,760
Speaker 1: an enormous amount of information that normally would be communicated

463
00:29:45,800 --> 00:29:48,440
Speaker 1: between two people if they were face to face. So

464
00:29:49,160 --> 00:29:51,520
Speaker 1: I don't want to mention say that emoticons are the

465
00:29:51,640 --> 00:29:54,600
Speaker 1: end all be all of communication, but they I think

466
00:29:54,640 --> 00:29:57,840
Speaker 1: they definitely have their use and they can really help

467
00:29:57,920 --> 00:30:01,200
Speaker 1: cut down on misunderstanding s, particularly when it comes to

468
00:30:01,240 --> 00:30:06,880
Speaker 1: doing things like posting jokes. Now, they also were more

469
00:30:07,040 --> 00:30:10,440
Speaker 1: useful than just language, because if you think about old

470
00:30:10,480 --> 00:30:14,280
Speaker 1: text messaging, you were limited to a hundred forty characters

471
00:30:14,480 --> 00:30:17,200
Speaker 1: or so a little bit more than that. Actually, hundred

472
00:30:17,280 --> 00:30:19,920
Speaker 1: forty I chose because that's Twitter, but obviously you know

473
00:30:20,000 --> 00:30:21,800
Speaker 1: with text messages it's a little bit more than that.

474
00:30:22,680 --> 00:30:26,400
Speaker 1: The problem with that is if you make a statement

475
00:30:26,480 --> 00:30:29,200
Speaker 1: and then you have to explain the emotional intent behind

476
00:30:29,240 --> 00:30:33,280
Speaker 1: that statement, it might double or triple the length of

477
00:30:33,320 --> 00:30:35,360
Speaker 1: the message you need to send, which means you either

478
00:30:35,440 --> 00:30:38,760
Speaker 1: have to send it in groups of messages so that

479
00:30:38,800 --> 00:30:42,480
Speaker 1: people understand what you meant when you texted what you texted,

480
00:30:43,200 --> 00:30:46,120
Speaker 1: or you could use an emoticon, which sums it up

481
00:30:46,280 --> 00:30:49,680
Speaker 1: in a very simple picture made up of these, you know,

482
00:30:49,840 --> 00:30:55,560
Speaker 1: bits of typographical symbols. So for the sake of brevity

483
00:30:56,000 --> 00:30:58,840
Speaker 1: and being able to get across that intent within the

484
00:30:58,880 --> 00:31:02,680
Speaker 1: constraints of digital information, it made a lot of sense.

485
00:31:03,120 --> 00:31:07,720
Speaker 1: So as cellular phones became popular, people began to adopt

486
00:31:07,760 --> 00:31:10,080
Speaker 1: the use of emoticons more and more. It was a

487
00:31:10,120 --> 00:31:13,920
Speaker 1: convenient way to get that meaning across. It was also

488
00:31:13,960 --> 00:31:17,360
Speaker 1: helpful if you wanted to express an emotional reaction to

489
00:31:17,440 --> 00:31:20,960
Speaker 1: something but words just didn't seem adequate. Maybe it would

490
00:31:21,000 --> 00:31:26,800
Speaker 1: seem trite or just not the right response. I've had

491
00:31:26,840 --> 00:31:30,520
Speaker 1: plenty of situations where I would text a smiley face

492
00:31:30,600 --> 00:31:35,400
Speaker 1: to somebody instead of saying something like that makes me happy,

493
00:31:35,680 --> 00:31:38,920
Speaker 1: because seeing a text that says that makes me happy

494
00:31:39,120 --> 00:31:41,320
Speaker 1: seems a little off putting to me. I can't even

495
00:31:41,320 --> 00:31:43,920
Speaker 1: put into words why. But if I get a thing,

496
00:31:44,400 --> 00:31:47,600
Speaker 1: if I get a message that says that makes me happy,

497
00:31:47,880 --> 00:31:51,800
Speaker 1: because there's no tone, there's no body language, there's no

498
00:31:51,840 --> 00:31:55,560
Speaker 1: facial expression. It feels like something a serial killer might

499
00:31:55,640 --> 00:31:59,200
Speaker 1: send to me because it's so flat in text. But

500
00:31:59,280 --> 00:32:01,719
Speaker 1: a smiley face that says it all. I get it.

501
00:32:02,240 --> 00:32:06,440
Speaker 1: You're you're approving, you're smiling, You're happy at the thing

502
00:32:06,600 --> 00:32:10,080
Speaker 1: I just said, Uh, the same thing was sad. You know,

503
00:32:10,200 --> 00:32:13,600
Speaker 1: Sometimes saying I am sad for you or it just

504
00:32:13,680 --> 00:32:17,400
Speaker 1: doesn't quite work and sending the picture people get the

505
00:32:17,440 --> 00:32:21,240
Speaker 1: idea of this is the emotion I am experiencing when

506
00:32:21,280 --> 00:32:25,560
Speaker 1: I see the message you have sent to me. One

507
00:32:25,560 --> 00:32:28,360
Speaker 1: thing I find really interesting is how emoticons have evolved

508
00:32:28,360 --> 00:32:31,480
Speaker 1: in different regions. So in the West here in the

509
00:32:31,520 --> 00:32:35,040
Speaker 1: United States and Canada and Europe, the style tends to

510
00:32:35,120 --> 00:32:39,040
Speaker 1: follow Falman's example with all the expressions turned to the side,

511
00:32:39,680 --> 00:32:42,320
Speaker 1: so you have to cock your head ninety degrees to

512
00:32:42,400 --> 00:32:47,680
Speaker 1: see the faces upright because everything's sideways. Colon open parentheses

513
00:32:47,720 --> 00:32:54,520
Speaker 1: are closed parentheses. Sometimes you might see people swap the

514
00:32:54,600 --> 00:32:57,800
Speaker 1: order around because usually it would go top to bottom

515
00:32:57,920 --> 00:33:00,800
Speaker 1: by reading left to right. So again the lander the eyes,

516
00:33:00,920 --> 00:33:05,800
Speaker 1: and the closed parentheses, for example, would be the smiling lips,

517
00:33:05,800 --> 00:33:08,200
Speaker 1: so that's top to bottom, left to right. Some people

518
00:33:08,200 --> 00:33:11,360
Speaker 1: would swap that where they go right to left for

519
00:33:11,440 --> 00:33:18,880
Speaker 1: top to bottom. They're crazy and you probably shouldn't trust them,

520
00:33:18,920 --> 00:33:21,120
Speaker 1: but they would do it the opposite way. But still

521
00:33:21,200 --> 00:33:26,560
Speaker 1: you would have this horizontal alignment instead of vertical for

522
00:33:26,640 --> 00:33:28,880
Speaker 1: the faces. But that's not the way it is all

523
00:33:28,920 --> 00:33:32,000
Speaker 1: over the world. In other parts of the world, you

524
00:33:32,040 --> 00:33:36,600
Speaker 1: would find a vertical representation. In Japan, that's the kind

525
00:33:36,640 --> 00:33:39,800
Speaker 1: of emoticons they would use. Now, this particular style is

526
00:33:39,840 --> 00:33:44,440
Speaker 1: still emoticons and they were called carol moji uh. This

527
00:33:44,560 --> 00:33:49,480
Speaker 1: style used a few more symbols than the Western versions did,

528
00:33:49,680 --> 00:33:53,400
Speaker 1: largely because the Japanese digital keyboards had to have a

529
00:33:53,400 --> 00:33:56,240
Speaker 1: lot more symbols in order to get across the written

530
00:33:56,320 --> 00:34:00,680
Speaker 1: language of Japanese, so they had a lot of different

531
00:34:00,720 --> 00:34:04,320
Speaker 1: symbols to work with, and they could build out images

532
00:34:04,480 --> 00:34:10,880
Speaker 1: that look like upright faces. It also ended up indicating

533
00:34:11,520 --> 00:34:15,040
Speaker 1: the elements of a face that are more important for

534
00:34:15,160 --> 00:34:17,960
Speaker 1: reading emotion in the Japanese culture as opposed to the

535
00:34:18,000 --> 00:34:21,640
Speaker 1: Western culture. In Western culture, the emphasis is on the mouth.

536
00:34:22,680 --> 00:34:26,160
Speaker 1: Is it a smile, Is it a frown? Is it indifference?

537
00:34:26,280 --> 00:34:29,680
Speaker 1: By the mark of just a straight line. Those are

538
00:34:29,880 --> 00:34:33,800
Speaker 1: typical for the Western depictions of emotion, But in Japan

539
00:34:34,520 --> 00:34:39,319
Speaker 1: the eyes are more important. So if the eyes are

540
00:34:39,360 --> 00:34:42,400
Speaker 1: positioned in a in a high position, it tends to

541
00:34:42,440 --> 00:34:47,760
Speaker 1: express joy. So you build out this little image using

542
00:34:47,800 --> 00:34:51,719
Speaker 1: these various symbols that are grouped together, and some of

543
00:34:51,760 --> 00:34:54,280
Speaker 1: the symbols are representing eyes. If they're in a high position,

544
00:34:54,440 --> 00:34:58,880
Speaker 1: that would mean happiness. You could also choose different images

545
00:34:59,200 --> 00:35:02,200
Speaker 1: for the mouth that would indicate a smile or a

546
00:35:02,280 --> 00:35:06,279
Speaker 1: laugh or something along those lines. Symbols that made the

547
00:35:06,280 --> 00:35:09,520
Speaker 1: eyes look like they were clinched shut, such as the

548
00:35:09,719 --> 00:35:13,640
Speaker 1: less than and greater than signs. Those could be used

549
00:35:13,640 --> 00:35:17,560
Speaker 1: to show displeasure that you're you're scrunching your eyes closed

550
00:35:17,600 --> 00:35:21,040
Speaker 1: because you're not happy. So again, the eyes are more

551
00:35:21,080 --> 00:35:26,920
Speaker 1: important here than the mouth would be. Also, because they

552
00:35:26,920 --> 00:35:30,920
Speaker 1: had more symbols, they could use lots of different shapes

553
00:35:30,960 --> 00:35:33,879
Speaker 1: like stars and hearts and things like that that were

554
00:35:34,040 --> 00:35:37,040
Speaker 1: kind of in webb ding or wing ding styles in

555
00:35:37,120 --> 00:35:40,000
Speaker 1: order to indicate or or to increase the number of

556
00:35:40,040 --> 00:35:44,040
Speaker 1: expressions that they can make with emoticons. The adoption of

557
00:35:44,080 --> 00:35:48,399
Speaker 1: the cell phone and later the smartphone was really off

558
00:35:48,440 --> 00:35:52,600
Speaker 1: the charts in Japan. Japanese cultures flocked to cell phone

559
00:35:52,640 --> 00:35:56,320
Speaker 1: technology faster than you saw and other parts of the world,

560
00:35:57,360 --> 00:36:02,279
Speaker 1: and partly because of those limitations of that technology, you

561
00:36:02,320 --> 00:36:06,720
Speaker 1: started seeing more use of emoticons in text messaging because

562
00:36:06,760 --> 00:36:09,560
Speaker 1: again it allows you to get across these emotional feelings

563
00:36:09,600 --> 00:36:14,000
Speaker 1: without having to spell everything out. But these style of

564
00:36:14,040 --> 00:36:16,799
Speaker 1: pictograms all had one thing in common. They consisted of

565
00:36:16,920 --> 00:36:22,279
Speaker 1: various symbols grouped together to create a similacrum of an emotion. So,

566
00:36:22,320 --> 00:36:25,960
Speaker 1: in other words, it's not really a smiley face. It's

567
00:36:26,000 --> 00:36:29,640
Speaker 1: a colon and a closed parentheses, so it's two different

568
00:36:29,640 --> 00:36:32,480
Speaker 1: symbols that together kind of look like a smiley face.

569
00:36:32,800 --> 00:36:37,320
Speaker 1: That's an emoticon. Emoticons are made up of individual symbols

570
00:36:37,320 --> 00:36:43,359
Speaker 1: that collectively appear to make a picture. Later you would

571
00:36:43,400 --> 00:36:47,080
Speaker 1: get the birth of the emoji. These are actual pictures

572
00:36:47,280 --> 00:36:50,799
Speaker 1: things like a smiley face. It's not a representation of

573
00:36:50,800 --> 00:36:54,279
Speaker 1: a smiley face. It's an actual smiley face. And as

574
00:36:54,320 --> 00:36:57,799
Speaker 1: the difference between an emoji and an emoticon, they are

575
00:36:57,840 --> 00:37:01,680
Speaker 1: not interchangeable. Emoticons are made up of individual symbols that

576
00:37:01,719 --> 00:37:04,960
Speaker 1: have been grouped together to make a better picture or

577
00:37:05,000 --> 00:37:08,719
Speaker 1: a bigger picture, I should say, and emoji are actual

578
00:37:08,960 --> 00:37:14,719
Speaker 1: images that have been crafted for the purpose of digital distribution. Now,

579
00:37:14,719 --> 00:37:16,600
Speaker 1: before I dive into this topic, I want to give

580
00:37:16,640 --> 00:37:19,440
Speaker 1: a shout out to an uh AN author and a

581
00:37:19,520 --> 00:37:24,759
Speaker 1: researcher named Vivian Evans. He's got an upcoming book titled

582
00:37:25,120 --> 00:37:29,040
Speaker 1: The Emoji Code, and Mr Evans Publishers sent me an

583
00:37:29,040 --> 00:37:31,560
Speaker 1: advanced copy of this book, so I used it as

584
00:37:31,600 --> 00:37:35,560
Speaker 1: one of my primary research sources for this episode, specifically

585
00:37:35,600 --> 00:37:40,360
Speaker 1: about emoji. Became in very handy, So if you see

586
00:37:40,360 --> 00:37:43,760
Speaker 1: the emoji code available. I believe it goes on sales

587
00:37:43,840 --> 00:37:48,360
Speaker 1: starting in August of this year. Uh, it's very interesting.

588
00:37:48,400 --> 00:37:50,920
Speaker 1: It has a lot to do about emoji and about

589
00:37:51,000 --> 00:37:54,840
Speaker 1: language and communication and psychology. It's got a lot of

590
00:37:54,880 --> 00:37:57,600
Speaker 1: different topics wrapped up in it, not just the history

591
00:37:58,280 --> 00:38:02,800
Speaker 1: and UH and and social use of emoji, but really

592
00:38:02,840 --> 00:38:07,799
Speaker 1: the psychological elements of language and communication and what separates

593
00:38:07,800 --> 00:38:11,400
Speaker 1: a language from a code. So check that out. But

594
00:38:11,520 --> 00:38:14,360
Speaker 1: to start with what exactly is an emoji? Well, the

595
00:38:14,400 --> 00:38:18,120
Speaker 1: word again is a combination of different words. Emoticon was

596
00:38:18,160 --> 00:38:21,920
Speaker 1: emotion and icon. Now with emoji, we're talking about Japanese words.

597
00:38:22,400 --> 00:38:27,360
Speaker 1: The e means picture and moji essentially means written character,

598
00:38:27,760 --> 00:38:32,880
Speaker 1: so picture written character altogether. Unlike emoticons, which represented stuff

599
00:38:32,880 --> 00:38:36,760
Speaker 1: by using common symbols, these are actual designs, little drawing,

600
00:38:36,960 --> 00:38:39,640
Speaker 1: small pictures of whatever it was you wanted to send,

601
00:38:39,680 --> 00:38:42,360
Speaker 1: so there is a difference. There are plenty of programs

602
00:38:42,360 --> 00:38:47,279
Speaker 1: that today will automatically convert emoticons into emoji, So with

603
00:38:47,360 --> 00:38:52,120
Speaker 1: a lot of different messaging systems or social media platforms,

604
00:38:52,400 --> 00:38:55,600
Speaker 1: if you were to do the colon closed parentheses instead

605
00:38:55,640 --> 00:38:59,239
Speaker 1: of seeing that emoticon, it will automatically convert it into

606
00:38:59,280 --> 00:39:05,000
Speaker 1: a smiley face emoji. Uh. Different programs will stylize this

607
00:39:05,160 --> 00:39:08,760
Speaker 1: in different ways, So depending upon which platform you're using,

608
00:39:08,880 --> 00:39:12,600
Speaker 1: it might appear like a smiley face in one design,

609
00:39:12,800 --> 00:39:14,600
Speaker 1: and if you're in a totally different platform, it could

610
00:39:14,640 --> 00:39:17,080
Speaker 1: look like a smiley face of a completely different design.

611
00:39:17,400 --> 00:39:21,839
Speaker 1: But in both cases you understand what the underlying message is.

612
00:39:22,520 --> 00:39:26,080
Speaker 1: They might look different because they are different instances of

613
00:39:26,120 --> 00:39:29,440
Speaker 1: the same idea, but you link it back to whatever

614
00:39:29,480 --> 00:39:33,400
Speaker 1: that core idea was. So for example, if I used

615
00:39:33,640 --> 00:39:36,560
Speaker 1: Google and I was sending a smiley face, and a

616
00:39:36,560 --> 00:39:39,200
Speaker 1: lot of those Google messaging systems, the smiley face would

617
00:39:39,200 --> 00:39:41,880
Speaker 1: come across as a little smiling Android because that's the

618
00:39:41,920 --> 00:39:46,000
Speaker 1: Google mobile operating system. But other systems might just have

619
00:39:46,120 --> 00:39:50,000
Speaker 1: a more traditional yellow smiley face, and others might have

620
00:39:50,160 --> 00:39:54,680
Speaker 1: it keyed directly into whatever their user interface looks like,

621
00:39:54,719 --> 00:39:58,240
Speaker 1: so that it it matches the rest of the design

622
00:39:58,600 --> 00:40:02,080
Speaker 1: of whatever me a platform or messaging system you're using.

623
00:40:03,440 --> 00:40:07,239
Speaker 1: Emoji first debuted in Japan in the nineteen nineties. At

624
00:40:07,280 --> 00:40:10,960
Speaker 1: that time, Japan was developing a mobile phone internet platform,

625
00:40:11,000 --> 00:40:13,560
Speaker 1: which was the precursor to the mobile sites that you

626
00:40:13,920 --> 00:40:16,680
Speaker 1: might encounter today when use a smartphone to browse the web.

627
00:40:17,000 --> 00:40:20,920
Speaker 1: Emoticons have been incredibly popular on cellular phones, and emoji

628
00:40:21,000 --> 00:40:24,640
Speaker 1: were seen as the next step. The Japanese company in

629
00:40:24,800 --> 00:40:28,920
Speaker 1: T T. DoCoMo was working on building this platform and

630
00:40:28,920 --> 00:40:33,879
Speaker 1: incorporated emoji into the user interface. In the beginning, there

631
00:40:33,880 --> 00:40:37,959
Speaker 1: were one hundred seventies six emoji characters available. Today there's

632
00:40:37,960 --> 00:40:41,759
Speaker 1: more than fifteen hundred variations that allow for different skin

633
00:40:41,880 --> 00:40:46,120
Speaker 1: tones for different faces and also to more accurately represent

634
00:40:46,280 --> 00:40:49,640
Speaker 1: the variety of features that humans can possess. Not to mention,

635
00:40:49,719 --> 00:40:52,480
Speaker 1: there are a ton of emojis for inanimate objects, for animals,

636
00:40:52,520 --> 00:40:57,840
Speaker 1: for countries. There's an enormous number of them now. The

637
00:40:57,920 --> 00:41:00,960
Speaker 1: rise of the emoji in the West really began in

638
00:41:01,040 --> 00:41:04,680
Speaker 1: September of two thousand eleven. That's about how long it

639
00:41:04,719 --> 00:41:09,279
Speaker 1: took for smartphone penetration to really reach a height in

640
00:41:09,320 --> 00:41:13,280
Speaker 1: the United States. By then, they had become consumer electronics.

641
00:41:13,320 --> 00:41:15,880
Speaker 1: You gotta keep in mind that before two thousand seven,

642
00:41:16,640 --> 00:41:20,520
Speaker 1: most smartphone owners were either bleeding edge tech adopters or

643
00:41:20,560 --> 00:41:24,080
Speaker 1: they were business executives who were using smartphones as personal

644
00:41:24,120 --> 00:41:27,920
Speaker 1: digital assistants, and no one else really needed a smartphone.

645
00:41:27,960 --> 00:41:32,279
Speaker 1: They weren't. The mobile web wasn't good enough, and the

646
00:41:32,360 --> 00:41:36,120
Speaker 1: interfaces for smartphones weren't intuitive enough for them to really

647
00:41:36,160 --> 00:41:39,600
Speaker 1: make a break into the consumer market. But then that

648
00:41:39,680 --> 00:41:43,040
Speaker 1: little company called Apple came along and introduced the iPhone,

649
00:41:43,440 --> 00:41:49,160
Speaker 1: and they really designed an amazing interface for smartphones. It's

650
00:41:49,160 --> 00:41:52,360
Speaker 1: not necessarily what I would have wanted. I mean, I

651
00:41:52,440 --> 00:41:56,120
Speaker 1: never bought an iPhone, but it did make using the

652
00:41:56,160 --> 00:42:02,480
Speaker 1: smartphone sexy and easy to understand. And by smartphones had

653
00:42:02,520 --> 00:42:06,960
Speaker 1: been dominating the market enough where emoji started to show

654
00:42:07,080 --> 00:42:11,759
Speaker 1: up on various digital keyboards, so it became common enough

655
00:42:11,800 --> 00:42:15,839
Speaker 1: to warrant a new approach to expressing emotion online. As

656
00:42:15,880 --> 00:42:17,560
Speaker 1: Evans points out in his book, the Rise of the

657
00:42:17,600 --> 00:42:21,239
Speaker 1: Emoji has also led to a decline in certain abbreviations

658
00:42:21,280 --> 00:42:24,560
Speaker 1: like l O, l j K, and OMG, which stand

659
00:42:24,600 --> 00:42:27,120
Speaker 1: for laugh out loud, just kidding, and oh my God.

660
00:42:27,960 --> 00:42:32,480
Speaker 1: Those used to be ubiquitous across the internet and across

661
00:42:32,480 --> 00:42:36,879
Speaker 1: the web, but now because of emojis, they are used

662
00:42:36,920 --> 00:42:40,359
Speaker 1: less frequently. People will use an emoji that's associated with

663
00:42:40,400 --> 00:42:44,200
Speaker 1: those abbreviations to get that feeling across, and some programs

664
00:42:44,200 --> 00:42:51,520
Speaker 1: will automatically translate those abbreviations or those initializations into the emojis,

665
00:42:52,719 --> 00:42:55,359
Speaker 1: and heck, the messaging system I use on Android will

666
00:42:55,560 --> 00:42:59,720
Speaker 1: even suggest emoji for certain common words, such as displaying

667
00:42:59,719 --> 00:43:02,239
Speaker 1: a little cartoon piece of cake if you write the

668
00:43:02,239 --> 00:43:06,280
Speaker 1: word cake. This is cute if you're sending a message

669
00:43:06,320 --> 00:43:08,880
Speaker 1: to somebody, like if I were texting my wife about

670
00:43:08,960 --> 00:43:10,840
Speaker 1: cake and it showed a little picture of cake, I

671
00:43:10,880 --> 00:43:13,600
Speaker 1: might want to use that, but it's really irritating if

672
00:43:13,640 --> 00:43:16,920
Speaker 1: you're I don't know, trying to create a food diary

673
00:43:17,080 --> 00:43:21,239
Speaker 1: entry into your fitness app. Cough cough. This happens to

674
00:43:21,280 --> 00:43:24,840
Speaker 1: me a lot. Cough. So it turns out my Fitness

675
00:43:24,920 --> 00:43:28,919
Speaker 1: Pal recognizes the word chicken, but it isn't so good

676
00:43:28,920 --> 00:43:32,520
Speaker 1: at figuring out what a little cartoon chicken means. So

677
00:43:32,600 --> 00:43:36,239
Speaker 1: I wish that this setting wouldn't automatically um pop up,

678
00:43:36,400 --> 00:43:40,279
Speaker 1: because I have on occasion typed in emojis into my

679
00:43:40,320 --> 00:43:42,960
Speaker 1: fitness tracker app and I've had to go back and

680
00:43:43,120 --> 00:43:46,000
Speaker 1: edit it. First world problem, if ever there was one.

681
00:43:46,960 --> 00:43:49,960
Speaker 1: Gosh darn it, this cartoon chicken is ruining my fitness

682
00:43:50,000 --> 00:43:53,880
Speaker 1: application I have running on my smartphone. Now that I

683
00:43:53,880 --> 00:43:55,799
Speaker 1: say it out loud, I'm actually ashamed that I even

684
00:43:55,800 --> 00:44:01,680
Speaker 1: brought it up anyway. And Evans's research he found that

685
00:44:03,040 --> 00:44:05,919
Speaker 1: of all smartphone owners in the United Kingdom had sent

686
00:44:06,040 --> 00:44:09,400
Speaker 1: messages containing an emoji at some point or another, and

687
00:44:09,520 --> 00:44:13,080
Speaker 1: fort of all smartphone owners had sent messages consisting of

688
00:44:13,280 --> 00:44:17,520
Speaker 1: only emoji with no text accompanying it. So they were

689
00:44:17,600 --> 00:44:23,640
Speaker 1: using emoji exclusively in some messages to communicate. Meaning that

690
00:44:23,680 --> 00:44:26,440
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that they were only text in emoji, but

691
00:44:26,560 --> 00:44:29,200
Speaker 1: that at some point or another they had only used

692
00:44:29,200 --> 00:44:31,680
Speaker 1: an emoji to get an idea across and not used

693
00:44:31,719 --> 00:44:34,080
Speaker 1: any text along with it. And there have been a

694
00:44:34,080 --> 00:44:37,160
Speaker 1: lot of examples of various personalities and news outlets posting

695
00:44:37,200 --> 00:44:40,839
Speaker 1: messages or headlines using only emoji. Now this is kind

696
00:44:40,840 --> 00:44:44,880
Speaker 1: of interesting. There's a governing body that determines what is

697
00:44:45,040 --> 00:44:50,440
Speaker 1: and isn't an official emoji. That body is a nonprofit

698
00:44:50,560 --> 00:44:55,560
Speaker 1: organization called the Unicode Consortium, which sounds kind of ominous,

699
00:44:55,600 --> 00:44:58,040
Speaker 1: so maybe we need some sort of shady emoji to

700
00:44:58,120 --> 00:45:01,120
Speaker 1: put next to that name. But the purpose of the

701
00:45:01,160 --> 00:45:05,360
Speaker 1: group is pretty straightforward. It's to create, maintain, and promote

702
00:45:05,520 --> 00:45:10,200
Speaker 1: software internationalization standards so that we don't encounter issues when

703
00:45:10,239 --> 00:45:13,080
Speaker 1: tech in One part of the world attempts to communicate

704
00:45:13,080 --> 00:45:15,640
Speaker 1: with tech in another part of the world. It would

705
00:45:15,680 --> 00:45:19,759
Speaker 1: be really frustrating if every time you try to send

706
00:45:19,800 --> 00:45:22,200
Speaker 1: data to a device that was across the world, you

707
00:45:22,320 --> 00:45:24,279
Speaker 1: ended up getting an error message because there was some

708
00:45:24,360 --> 00:45:27,600
Speaker 1: sort of incompatibility with the way you were sending that message.

709
00:45:28,200 --> 00:45:31,719
Speaker 1: So if you were just getting a message on your

710
00:45:31,719 --> 00:45:34,960
Speaker 1: phone and all it was showing was blocks, just empty blocks,

711
00:45:35,040 --> 00:45:38,720
Speaker 1: because the phone was unable to interpret what those emoji meant,

712
00:45:39,200 --> 00:45:42,080
Speaker 1: then you're losing all meaning entirely. And of course, the

713
00:45:42,120 --> 00:45:45,640
Speaker 1: purpose of emoji is to help get your meaning across

714
00:45:45,719 --> 00:45:50,880
Speaker 1: to someone. So if there's no emoji there, if the

715
00:45:50,920 --> 00:45:53,719
Speaker 1: way I'm receiving it is incompatible with the way you're

716
00:45:53,760 --> 00:45:57,000
Speaker 1: sending it, I miss out on that intent. And it

717
00:45:57,040 --> 00:45:59,360
Speaker 1: could be that I misinterpret your message or that I

718
00:45:59,440 --> 00:46:03,160
Speaker 1: just don't standard at all, because if you're communicating primarily

719
00:46:03,239 --> 00:46:07,239
Speaker 1: through emoji, all I'm getting our empty boxes. Well that's

720
00:46:07,239 --> 00:46:11,440
Speaker 1: the purpose of this organization. It's not just for emoji.

721
00:46:11,520 --> 00:46:14,960
Speaker 1: That's only one part of what they do. But emoji

722
00:46:15,120 --> 00:46:19,320
Speaker 1: does have a standard, and by creating this international standard,

723
00:46:19,360 --> 00:46:23,440
Speaker 1: they can ensure that various platforms are all able to

724
00:46:23,680 --> 00:46:28,160
Speaker 1: interpret the same code so that they can display a

725
00:46:28,280 --> 00:46:32,520
Speaker 1: relevant image so that when you receive it, you understand

726
00:46:32,560 --> 00:46:39,760
Speaker 1: what's being sent. According to this consortium, emoji are pictographs

727
00:46:40,120 --> 00:46:43,759
Speaker 1: a k a. Pictorial symbols that are typically presented in

728
00:46:43,800 --> 00:46:47,760
Speaker 1: a colorful form and used inline in text. They represent

729
00:46:47,880 --> 00:46:52,200
Speaker 1: things such as faces, whether vehicles and buildings, food and drink,

730
00:46:52,480 --> 00:46:57,600
Speaker 1: animals and plants, or icons that represent emotions, feelings, or activities.

731
00:46:57,920 --> 00:47:01,320
Speaker 1: The consortium determines the standards for how emoji should be designed.

732
00:47:01,440 --> 00:47:05,919
Speaker 1: For example, each character should have an emoji variant, which

733
00:47:06,000 --> 00:47:11,640
Speaker 1: can even include animation and a text presentation. Text presentation

734
00:47:11,680 --> 00:47:15,520
Speaker 1: tends to be black and white or monochromatic. The standard

735
00:47:15,560 --> 00:47:17,960
Speaker 1: goes on to say, a text presentation must be a

736
00:47:18,040 --> 00:47:21,600
Speaker 1: simple foreground shape whose color is determined by other information

737
00:47:21,600 --> 00:47:24,040
Speaker 1: and does not change. So if you were to have

738
00:47:24,480 --> 00:47:30,040
Speaker 1: a text presentation of an emoji within other text, you

739
00:47:30,080 --> 00:47:32,560
Speaker 1: could highlight all that text and change the font color,

740
00:47:32,680 --> 00:47:36,239
Speaker 1: but the emoji itself should remain whatever the original color was.

741
00:47:36,320 --> 00:47:38,520
Speaker 1: You cannot change it just by changing the color of

742
00:47:38,600 --> 00:47:42,840
Speaker 1: the text. Its color is independently determined from the color

743
00:47:42,920 --> 00:47:46,919
Speaker 1: of text itself. The standard ends up saying that, well,

744
00:47:46,960 --> 00:47:49,120
Speaker 1: you need both of these things, and they both need

745
00:47:49,120 --> 00:47:53,799
Speaker 1: to have the same core concept at play, but they

746
00:47:53,800 --> 00:47:59,520
Speaker 1: can be very different designs. So, for example, an ice

747
00:47:59,520 --> 00:48:02,600
Speaker 1: cream cone, the emoji version might be very colorful. It

748
00:48:02,680 --> 00:48:05,839
Speaker 1: might be a little golden cone and then maybe a

749
00:48:05,840 --> 00:48:08,200
Speaker 1: pink blob of ice cream, maybe even a little melting

750
00:48:08,320 --> 00:48:11,719
Speaker 1: drop coming off of it, Whereas the text representation might

751
00:48:11,719 --> 00:48:15,040
Speaker 1: be an icon that clearly has a cone and a

752
00:48:15,080 --> 00:48:18,000
Speaker 1: little circle on top, and you would look at that

753
00:48:18,080 --> 00:48:20,480
Speaker 1: and say, all right, well, that that's that's an ice

754
00:48:20,480 --> 00:48:23,120
Speaker 1: cream cone. Because the cone tapers. I figured that's an

755
00:48:23,160 --> 00:48:25,600
Speaker 1: ice cream cone. It's not a microphone, it's not something

756
00:48:25,640 --> 00:48:28,560
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna mistake it for something else. And while

757
00:48:28,640 --> 00:48:32,480
Speaker 1: the two instances look different from each other, they both

758
00:48:32,560 --> 00:48:35,920
Speaker 1: link back to that same core concept. And that is

759
00:48:36,080 --> 00:48:39,279
Speaker 1: absolutely critical with emoji. It has to link back to

760
00:48:39,320 --> 00:48:43,000
Speaker 1: that core concept, or else it's not relevant. It's sending

761
00:48:43,040 --> 00:48:46,120
Speaker 1: the wrong message. So you couldn't have an ice cream

762
00:48:46,160 --> 00:48:48,400
Speaker 1: cone that could be mistaken for something else like a

763
00:48:48,400 --> 00:48:54,200
Speaker 1: fire hydrant. That would end up causing massive community communication problems.

764
00:48:54,200 --> 00:48:56,440
Speaker 1: I mean, if you send me a message says today

765
00:48:56,480 --> 00:48:59,040
Speaker 1: is really hot, let's go out and buy a fire hydrant.

766
00:48:59,040 --> 00:49:03,520
Speaker 1: I'd say that's no, I don't even know how you

767
00:49:03,560 --> 00:49:07,600
Speaker 1: would do it, and then we'd have a breakdown in communication.

768
00:49:08,600 --> 00:49:11,719
Speaker 1: So there are very specific rules that you have to

769
00:49:11,760 --> 00:49:16,359
Speaker 1: follow in order to create these emoji, and I'll get

770
00:49:16,400 --> 00:49:19,000
Speaker 1: into some more of those rules in just a minute.

771
00:49:19,040 --> 00:49:21,719
Speaker 1: But before I get into that, let's take another quick

772
00:49:21,760 --> 00:49:32,319
Speaker 1: break to thank our sponsor. The first country that ever

773
00:49:32,400 --> 00:49:36,520
Speaker 1: created its own emojis for the purpose of national identity

774
00:49:37,080 --> 00:49:42,399
Speaker 1: was Finland. Finland created Finnish emoji that you couldn't find

775
00:49:42,440 --> 00:49:46,799
Speaker 1: anywhere else. Uh. For example, they had one of a

776
00:49:46,880 --> 00:49:51,319
Speaker 1: person in a salma because it's Finland, the country where

777
00:49:51,320 --> 00:49:54,200
Speaker 1: I'd quite want to be pony trekking or camping or

778
00:49:54,239 --> 00:49:57,880
Speaker 1: just watching TV. If you get that reference that I

779
00:49:58,000 --> 00:50:02,759
Speaker 1: just made, tell me, because I will be impressed and

780
00:50:02,800 --> 00:50:06,560
Speaker 1: will bestow upon you my good wishes because I have

781
00:50:06,640 --> 00:50:13,440
Speaker 1: nothing else to give away yet. These emojis, these Finish emojis,

782
00:50:13,760 --> 00:50:16,839
Speaker 1: were not actually part of the Unicode standard, so they

783
00:50:16,920 --> 00:50:20,640
Speaker 1: did not become universal because again those Unicode standards, that

784
00:50:20,719 --> 00:50:25,080
Speaker 1: was an international standard. And while these emojis were popular

785
00:50:25,120 --> 00:50:27,600
Speaker 1: in Finland, they didn't have a whole lot of application

786
00:50:27,719 --> 00:50:31,239
Speaker 1: outside of that country. So they didn't become part of

787
00:50:31,280 --> 00:50:35,640
Speaker 1: the general lexicon of emojis, so they are an emoji,

788
00:50:35,760 --> 00:50:41,000
Speaker 1: but not an official emoji from the Unicode standpoint. Now,

789
00:50:41,000 --> 00:50:43,560
Speaker 1: when an emoji does become standard, it can be included

790
00:50:43,600 --> 00:50:47,759
Speaker 1: on digital keyboards across all platforms and devices. Otherwise you

791
00:50:47,760 --> 00:50:51,160
Speaker 1: could be limited to a specific program to show particular

792
00:50:51,239 --> 00:50:54,319
Speaker 1: types of emoji. There's an example I can give right

793
00:50:54,360 --> 00:50:57,520
Speaker 1: away because I saw it earlier today on Twitch dot tv.

794
00:50:57,719 --> 00:51:00,320
Speaker 1: One of the emojis you can post is a Bob

795
00:51:00,440 --> 00:51:04,239
Speaker 1: Ross emoji. Bob Ross emojis are adorable, but they are

796
00:51:04,320 --> 00:51:07,080
Speaker 1: also unique to Twitch. They're not going to be across

797
00:51:07,160 --> 00:51:12,120
Speaker 1: all platforms. Now. One thing that has to be true

798
00:51:12,320 --> 00:51:15,560
Speaker 1: no matter what platform it's on is that they should

799
00:51:15,560 --> 00:51:19,319
Speaker 1: be identifiable to that core concept that was chosen in

800
00:51:19,360 --> 00:51:21,600
Speaker 1: the first place. So if you send me that ice

801
00:51:21,640 --> 00:51:24,120
Speaker 1: cream cone emoji, that's what I should see on my screen,

802
00:51:24,160 --> 00:51:26,720
Speaker 1: regardless of the program. It might look like a different

803
00:51:26,760 --> 00:51:28,600
Speaker 1: type of ice cream cone to me than it did

804
00:51:28,680 --> 00:51:32,319
Speaker 1: to you, but it should be readily identifiable as an

805
00:51:32,320 --> 00:51:35,400
Speaker 1: ice cream cone as opposed to some other object like

806
00:51:35,440 --> 00:51:38,960
Speaker 1: a yo yo. There have been some interesting campaigns to

807
00:51:39,000 --> 00:51:43,000
Speaker 1: get certain emoji adopted by the Unicode Consortium. For example,

808
00:51:43,600 --> 00:51:46,960
Speaker 1: when it comes to food emoji, we have Taco Bell

809
00:51:47,120 --> 00:51:51,920
Speaker 1: to thank for the taco emoji. That Taco Bell they

810
00:51:52,040 --> 00:51:54,960
Speaker 1: organized a petition on change dot org, and it might

811
00:51:55,000 --> 00:51:56,839
Speaker 1: be one of the few times I have ever heard

812
00:51:56,880 --> 00:52:00,080
Speaker 1: of an online petition that actually created enough moment to

813
00:52:00,400 --> 00:52:03,400
Speaker 1: get something done. And I might be a little snarky

814
00:52:03,440 --> 00:52:05,640
Speaker 1: about that, but honestly, I think a lot of online

815
00:52:05,640 --> 00:52:10,880
Speaker 1: petitions ultimately don't accomplish much. In this case, it accomplished something.

816
00:52:11,000 --> 00:52:14,240
Speaker 1: I don't know that it was anything necessarily world changing,

817
00:52:14,239 --> 00:52:18,719
Speaker 1: but it did get tacos added to official emojis. There

818
00:52:18,800 --> 00:52:21,840
Speaker 1: was also a businesswoman named ye Ing Lu who was

819
00:52:22,040 --> 00:52:26,520
Speaker 1: successful in petitioning the consortium into adopting a new food emoji,

820
00:52:26,680 --> 00:52:30,040
Speaker 1: and that was the dumpling. This became known as the

821
00:52:30,120 --> 00:52:33,720
Speaker 1: Dumpling Project. She argued that it should become an official

822
00:52:33,719 --> 00:52:37,720
Speaker 1: emoji to join the other ones that were already represented. UH.

823
00:52:37,880 --> 00:52:40,840
Speaker 1: A lot of the foods that were represented involved foods

824
00:52:40,840 --> 00:52:46,080
Speaker 1: that were popular in Western cultures pizza, hamburgers, especially American culture.

825
00:52:46,800 --> 00:52:49,600
Speaker 1: Not a big surprise seeing as how the web was

826
00:52:49,680 --> 00:52:52,200
Speaker 1: so dominant and the United States was very dominant on

827
00:52:52,239 --> 00:52:56,560
Speaker 1: the web. But people like yeing Lu wanted to have

828
00:52:56,680 --> 00:53:00,319
Speaker 1: representation of other cultures, and so she argued that the

829
00:53:00,360 --> 00:53:02,960
Speaker 1: dumplings should be adopted, and ultimately it was. And to

830
00:53:03,000 --> 00:53:07,240
Speaker 1: be fair, dumplings can also appear in very different forms

831
00:53:07,280 --> 00:53:10,120
Speaker 1: around the world, so it's not it's not something that

832
00:53:10,280 --> 00:53:15,120
Speaker 1: is peculiar to Chinese culture. It is also in others

833
00:53:15,160 --> 00:53:18,080
Speaker 1: as well, in different forms. There lots of different types

834
00:53:18,080 --> 00:53:21,600
Speaker 1: of dumplings. There are certain rules that you have to

835
00:53:21,640 --> 00:53:24,800
Speaker 1: follow if you want to submit an emoji. Now, first,

836
00:53:25,320 --> 00:53:27,840
Speaker 1: there are certain subjects that are just against the rules,

837
00:53:27,840 --> 00:53:30,200
Speaker 1: and this is where the bob Ross one would fall apart.

838
00:53:31,320 --> 00:53:34,560
Speaker 1: You cannot create an emoji that represents any real person,

839
00:53:34,680 --> 00:53:38,640
Speaker 1: alive or dead. So the bob Ross emoji would not

840
00:53:38,680 --> 00:53:42,439
Speaker 1: pass muster for the Unicode emojis because it breaks that rule.

841
00:53:43,360 --> 00:53:47,720
Speaker 1: That's off limits for Unicode adoption. Deities are also verboten.

842
00:53:48,200 --> 00:53:52,680
Speaker 1: You cannot have a UH and an official emoji that

843
00:53:52,760 --> 00:53:57,640
Speaker 1: represents a religious specific religious figure, so you won't find

844
00:53:57,640 --> 00:54:01,719
Speaker 1: emojis representing Buddha or Jesus, for example, and you have

845
00:54:01,800 --> 00:54:05,279
Speaker 1: to pass more subjective standards as well. For example, one

846
00:54:05,280 --> 00:54:08,720
Speaker 1: of the requirements is that the emoji must have widespread appeal.

847
00:54:09,640 --> 00:54:14,480
Speaker 1: In other words, this is what the Finnish ones would

848
00:54:14,480 --> 00:54:17,399
Speaker 1: not have met. The person in as Sanna's probably not

849
00:54:17,480 --> 00:54:23,320
Speaker 1: going to be as widespread as it would be in Scandinavia,

850
00:54:23,880 --> 00:54:28,520
Speaker 1: so it doesn't really fit that criteria. However, this is subjective.

851
00:54:28,520 --> 00:54:32,400
Speaker 1: How do you determine how popular something must be before

852
00:54:32,440 --> 00:54:35,839
Speaker 1: you say it has widespread appeal? I don't know how

853
00:54:35,880 --> 00:54:38,279
Speaker 1: they answer that question. It might be something that is

854
00:54:38,280 --> 00:54:42,560
Speaker 1: a case by case basis. Some of them just end

855
00:54:42,600 --> 00:54:46,440
Speaker 1: up being judgment calls, and sometimes it can take a

856
00:54:46,440 --> 00:54:49,520
Speaker 1: while for the group to reach any sort of consensus

857
00:54:49,560 --> 00:54:51,480
Speaker 1: on it. So it may be that something gets that

858
00:54:51,520 --> 00:54:56,520
Speaker 1: gets dismissed early on is accepted later on because people

859
00:54:56,600 --> 00:54:59,319
Speaker 1: have changed their perception and say, no, this has a

860
00:54:59,360 --> 00:55:03,560
Speaker 1: wider ap you old than we first thought, and therefore

861
00:55:03,719 --> 00:55:07,120
Speaker 1: it has merit. As an emoji and there are tons

862
00:55:07,200 --> 00:55:10,480
Speaker 1: of stories of emoji being used in clever reporting or

863
00:55:10,600 --> 00:55:13,680
Speaker 1: marketing or playful ways. But there are also a few

864
00:55:13,680 --> 00:55:17,120
Speaker 1: stories that are a lot more serious, such as the

865
00:55:17,120 --> 00:55:22,520
Speaker 1: case of Osiris Aristi. In the winter of Aristi posted

866
00:55:22,560 --> 00:55:27,640
Speaker 1: some messages on Facebook. He had a publicly available Facebook profile,

867
00:55:27,680 --> 00:55:31,479
Speaker 1: he did not have it, posting specifically to friends, and

868
00:55:31,560 --> 00:55:36,680
Speaker 1: he was posting lots of angry messages, particularly about police,

869
00:55:36,760 --> 00:55:39,040
Speaker 1: and one of those was a message made up of

870
00:55:39,080 --> 00:55:43,640
Speaker 1: emoji that included a police officer emoji followed by three

871
00:55:43,680 --> 00:55:47,360
Speaker 1: gun emojis that were pointed toward the police officer, and

872
00:55:47,440 --> 00:55:53,520
Speaker 1: on January eight, police arrested Aristi, charging him with making

873
00:55:53,560 --> 00:55:57,680
Speaker 1: a terrorist threat against police, among a few other charges.

874
00:55:58,440 --> 00:56:01,120
Speaker 1: That terrorist charge would later be dropped, but it was

875
00:56:01,160 --> 00:56:05,440
Speaker 1: a precedent showing that emoji do matter, that people can

876
00:56:05,480 --> 00:56:10,200
Speaker 1: interpret that as actual serious language. Um made a lot

877
00:56:10,200 --> 00:56:14,440
Speaker 1: of headlines at the time, and there were other charges

878
00:56:14,680 --> 00:56:18,640
Speaker 1: that Aristi ended up getting called up on, but that

879
00:56:18,680 --> 00:56:21,600
Speaker 1: particular terrorist charge did not hold up. It was it

880
00:56:21,640 --> 00:56:26,520
Speaker 1: was dropped after about a month of the proceedings. Evans

881
00:56:26,600 --> 00:56:30,239
Speaker 1: argues that emoji aren't a language in themselves, but rather

882
00:56:30,600 --> 00:56:34,960
Speaker 1: are a code, which I agree with. I would also

883
00:56:35,040 --> 00:56:39,520
Speaker 1: suggest that emoji could eventually become more than just a code,

884
00:56:39,560 --> 00:56:44,080
Speaker 1: but that would require some other elements for emoji to

885
00:56:44,200 --> 00:56:47,919
Speaker 1: actually qualify as a language. It could end up being

886
00:56:47,960 --> 00:56:51,040
Speaker 1: something similar to what we see with sign language. And

887
00:56:51,080 --> 00:56:54,319
Speaker 1: you've probably heard of sign language interpreters. You might even

888
00:56:54,320 --> 00:56:57,520
Speaker 1: know sign language, but the reason we call them interpreters

889
00:56:57,600 --> 00:57:00,719
Speaker 1: is they have to interpret the meaning people ache when

890
00:57:00,719 --> 00:57:03,759
Speaker 1: they sign and then turn that into some other form

891
00:57:03,800 --> 00:57:09,120
Speaker 1: of language like English, because sign language, uh isn't just

892
00:57:09,200 --> 00:57:12,200
Speaker 1: a visual representation of language. In fact, that's not what

893
00:57:12,320 --> 00:57:14,960
Speaker 1: it is at all. Sign language is not a visual

894
00:57:15,239 --> 00:57:19,680
Speaker 1: version of English. American sign language is not just hand

895
00:57:19,720 --> 00:57:24,240
Speaker 1: gestures that relate back to English words. Sign language is

896
00:57:24,360 --> 00:57:28,520
Speaker 1: in itself its own language, with its own vocabulary, its

897
00:57:28,560 --> 00:57:32,360
Speaker 1: own rules of grammar, sentence structure. All of the things

898
00:57:32,360 --> 00:57:35,440
Speaker 1: you would find in any other language, they are present

899
00:57:35,880 --> 00:57:40,880
Speaker 1: in sign language. So when people who learn sign language

900
00:57:40,920 --> 00:57:44,520
Speaker 1: as an additional language learn it, they are frequently doing

901
00:57:44,560 --> 00:57:49,520
Speaker 1: a more direct interpretation of English and then translating that

902
00:57:49,680 --> 00:57:54,320
Speaker 1: into signs. People who are using sign language natively are

903
00:57:54,400 --> 00:57:59,280
Speaker 1: communicating ideas through sign language. It's not filtering into English

904
00:57:59,440 --> 00:58:02,200
Speaker 1: and then in a sign language, it is straight into

905
00:58:02,240 --> 00:58:05,960
Speaker 1: sign language. It is a language like any other. Emoji

906
00:58:06,000 --> 00:58:10,080
Speaker 1: don't qualify as that. Emoji do not have a codified

907
00:58:10,200 --> 00:58:13,720
Speaker 1: set of rules and grammar that they can follow where

908
00:58:14,040 --> 00:58:18,720
Speaker 1: you can expect to get your meaning across. Emoji depend

909
00:58:18,800 --> 00:58:23,840
Speaker 1: heavily upon pre existing languages, and that also means that

910
00:58:23,960 --> 00:58:29,240
Speaker 1: they tend to follow the logical course that our languages

911
00:58:29,320 --> 00:58:32,360
Speaker 1: follow for all of our respective cultures. What I mean

912
00:58:32,400 --> 00:58:37,320
Speaker 1: by that is English has a very specific grammatical structure.

913
00:58:37,560 --> 00:58:42,280
Speaker 1: We have a particular word order we associate with intent

914
00:58:42,520 --> 00:58:46,720
Speaker 1: and meaning. So if I were to try and spell

915
00:58:46,800 --> 00:58:49,840
Speaker 1: out a message in emoji, it would likely follow a

916
00:58:49,880 --> 00:58:53,160
Speaker 1: pattern that would be similar to what I would say

917
00:58:53,320 --> 00:58:56,320
Speaker 1: if I were speaking those words out or typing those

918
00:58:56,360 --> 00:58:59,240
Speaker 1: words out. But if you came from a different culture

919
00:58:59,480 --> 00:59:03,800
Speaker 1: that had different grammar, different word order and sentence structure,

920
00:59:04,680 --> 00:59:09,000
Speaker 1: you might try and express the exact same concept I'm

921
00:59:09,040 --> 00:59:13,280
Speaker 1: talking about with a completely different order of emoji, because

922
00:59:13,320 --> 00:59:17,240
Speaker 1: you would be following the logic dictated by your own

923
00:59:17,360 --> 00:59:22,000
Speaker 1: language rather than by English. And because of this, emoji

924
00:59:22,080 --> 00:59:26,080
Speaker 1: don't have a universal set of rules to follow. They

925
00:59:26,120 --> 00:59:29,000
Speaker 1: cannot really be a language. It is more of a code.

926
00:59:29,040 --> 00:59:32,840
Speaker 1: It's a codified version of an pre existing language that

927
00:59:33,440 --> 00:59:36,919
Speaker 1: tries to get those concepts across through pictures rather than

928
00:59:36,920 --> 00:59:40,800
Speaker 1: through words, but they're still following the grammatical rules in

929
00:59:40,880 --> 00:59:44,920
Speaker 1: general that words follow. To wrap this up, I thought

930
00:59:44,960 --> 00:59:47,040
Speaker 1: it'd be fun to talk about some of the most

931
00:59:47,200 --> 00:59:50,640
Speaker 1: popular emoji, which is turns out a very difficult thing

932
00:59:50,680 --> 00:59:54,240
Speaker 1: to determine. I actually used a tool called emoji tracker

933
00:59:54,360 --> 00:59:56,800
Speaker 1: dot com to look at real time feedback on which

934
00:59:56,840 --> 00:59:59,720
Speaker 1: emoji we're getting the most frequent use on Twitter. I

935
00:59:59,800 --> 01:00:02,720
Speaker 1: do not recommend looking at it if you suffer from

936
01:00:03,400 --> 01:00:08,600
Speaker 1: UH seizures like if if visual cues can trigger a seizure,

937
01:00:08,800 --> 01:00:13,720
Speaker 1: don't look at emoji emoji tracker dot com because there's

938
01:00:13,760 --> 01:00:17,200
Speaker 1: lots of stuff changing rapidly as you look at it

939
01:00:17,200 --> 01:00:20,240
Speaker 1: in real time. But first place easily goes to what

940
01:00:20,440 --> 01:00:24,479
Speaker 1: is often referred to as face with joy. It's also

941
01:00:24,520 --> 01:00:28,120
Speaker 1: the the laughing so hard tears are coming out emoji,

942
01:00:28,600 --> 01:00:32,160
Speaker 1: so it represents that you're so overcome with joy that

943
01:00:32,240 --> 01:00:36,360
Speaker 1: you're crying tears as a result. Second place would go

944
01:00:36,440 --> 01:00:40,959
Speaker 1: to just a simple heart emoji. Uh, that's adorable. Third

945
01:00:40,960 --> 01:00:43,160
Speaker 1: place would go to the smiley face that has hearts

946
01:00:43,200 --> 01:00:46,240
Speaker 1: for eyes. So you see that the first few all

947
01:00:46,280 --> 01:00:50,720
Speaker 1: have to do with joy and love, which is nice. Uh.

948
01:00:50,760 --> 01:00:54,000
Speaker 1: It's only when you get to fifth place on emoji

949
01:00:54,040 --> 01:00:57,520
Speaker 1: tracker dot com that I saw the first sad emoji,

950
01:00:57,560 --> 01:01:00,160
Speaker 1: where it was a sad crying face, and seventh when

951
01:01:00,160 --> 01:01:03,720
Speaker 1: you get your first true displeasure emoji. Not just sad,

952
01:01:03,800 --> 01:01:08,080
Speaker 1: but I do not approve of this kind of face. Now,

953
01:01:08,120 --> 01:01:10,840
Speaker 1: Twitter is just one source. The University of Michigan actually

954
01:01:10,880 --> 01:01:13,720
Speaker 1: conducted a study back in to look at the most

955
01:01:13,720 --> 01:01:18,080
Speaker 1: popular emoji. They found similar results across the board. The

956
01:01:18,120 --> 01:01:21,360
Speaker 1: face with joy emoji was still number one in their

957
01:01:21,400 --> 01:01:24,400
Speaker 1: In their search, it appeared more than twice as often

958
01:01:24,440 --> 01:01:28,720
Speaker 1: as the second most popular emoji, which again was the heart. Uh.

959
01:01:28,800 --> 01:01:32,720
Speaker 1: The okay symbol as in the circle made with the

960
01:01:32,760 --> 01:01:36,080
Speaker 1: forefinger and thumb that was in the top ten. Uh.

961
01:01:36,320 --> 01:01:40,080
Speaker 1: Ninth place went to the first sad crying emoji, so

962
01:01:40,440 --> 01:01:43,080
Speaker 1: sadness did not get in the top five, but it

963
01:01:43,160 --> 01:01:47,320
Speaker 1: was number nine. The see no Evil monkey was number thirteen,

964
01:01:48,320 --> 01:01:52,080
Speaker 1: and number twenty was clapping hands. I was amazed that

965
01:01:52,160 --> 01:01:56,720
Speaker 1: Pooh didn't make the top twenty. Twitter issued a report

966
01:01:56,720 --> 01:01:59,480
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen that gave indications the most popular emoji

967
01:01:59,600 --> 01:02:03,720
Speaker 1: include eating a breakdown by country, which I found absolutely fascinating.

968
01:02:04,960 --> 01:02:08,440
Speaker 1: In the United States and in Canada and the United Kingdom,

969
01:02:08,440 --> 01:02:11,520
Speaker 1: it was an expression of dismay. It was an open mouthed,

970
01:02:12,360 --> 01:02:17,000
Speaker 1: sad eyes expression. It looked like someone wailing and let's

971
01:02:17,040 --> 01:02:19,600
Speaker 1: be fair. Two thousand sixteen was a pretty freaking rough

972
01:02:19,720 --> 01:02:22,480
Speaker 1: year for a lot of places, so you can imagine

973
01:02:22,520 --> 01:02:25,480
Speaker 1: why the UK and North and North America had this

974
01:02:25,600 --> 01:02:30,320
Speaker 1: sort of despair face going South America was all about

975
01:02:30,440 --> 01:02:35,240
Speaker 1: music in ten they were all using musical note emoji,

976
01:02:35,520 --> 01:02:38,360
Speaker 1: holding the number one spot in various countries in South America.

977
01:02:38,720 --> 01:02:43,200
Speaker 1: Mexico was the high five emoji, and uh you had.

978
01:02:44,120 --> 01:02:48,240
Speaker 1: Spain's emoji was the arm making a bicep muscle pose,

979
01:02:48,400 --> 01:02:50,920
Speaker 1: so you know, showing them the guns. So there was

980
01:02:51,000 --> 01:02:54,120
Speaker 1: just one guns, the right arm. So Spain apparently was

981
01:02:54,240 --> 01:02:58,840
Speaker 1: very um muscular. Remind been some machiesmo in there, I

982
01:02:58,880 --> 01:03:02,920
Speaker 1: don't know. Germany was given everybody the old thumbs up.

983
01:03:03,200 --> 01:03:07,240
Speaker 1: In Italy, France and Japan all had different variations of hearts,

984
01:03:08,120 --> 01:03:10,200
Speaker 1: like one had like a heart with a little arrow

985
01:03:10,240 --> 01:03:11,840
Speaker 1: through it. One of them had a heart with little

986
01:03:11,880 --> 01:03:14,800
Speaker 1: wings attached. But yeah, they all they all were very sweet,

987
01:03:15,000 --> 01:03:20,520
Speaker 1: whereas South Korea was getting super romantic with a lips emoji,

988
01:03:20,840 --> 01:03:26,560
Speaker 1: you know, like a lipstick mark. Smoochy smoochy. Hey, South Korea,

989
01:03:27,080 --> 01:03:29,760
Speaker 1: call me, I hope you're not upset about those Samsung

990
01:03:29,760 --> 01:03:32,360
Speaker 1: episodes I did where I talked about your government in

991
01:03:32,400 --> 01:03:35,080
Speaker 1: the end. Emoji and emoticons can help us get those

992
01:03:35,120 --> 01:03:38,160
Speaker 1: messages across with less of a chance for a misinterpretation

993
01:03:38,200 --> 01:03:40,600
Speaker 1: of our intent, or they can be used to completely

994
01:03:40,680 --> 01:03:44,080
Speaker 1: baffle our audience or present a challenge. What the heck

995
01:03:44,200 --> 01:03:48,040
Speaker 1: does it mean if I post an airplane, cake monkey

996
01:03:48,080 --> 01:03:52,800
Speaker 1: and Irish flag in sequence? I'll never tell, but I

997
01:03:52,840 --> 01:03:56,280
Speaker 1: do hope you enjoyed listening to this episode. If you

998
01:03:56,320 --> 01:03:59,680
Speaker 1: have suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, you can

999
01:03:59,720 --> 01:04:02,600
Speaker 1: send those to me. You can send them via email

1000
01:04:02,720 --> 01:04:08,520
Speaker 1: the shows addresses text Stuff at how stuff works dot com,

1001
01:04:08,640 --> 01:04:11,240
Speaker 1: or you can always drop me a line on Facebook

1002
01:04:11,320 --> 01:04:13,480
Speaker 1: or Twitter. The handle for both of those would be

1003
01:04:13,520 --> 01:04:18,000
Speaker 1: text Stuff h s W. Remember I live stream my

1004
01:04:18,160 --> 01:04:22,760
Speaker 1: podcasts on Wednesdays and Fridays over at twitch dot tv

1005
01:04:22,960 --> 01:04:25,840
Speaker 1: slash tech Stuff, so feel free to jump over there

1006
01:04:25,960 --> 01:04:28,360
Speaker 1: check out the schedule see if you can join us

1007
01:04:28,560 --> 01:04:30,760
Speaker 1: for a live show. The chat room is a lot

1008
01:04:30,800 --> 01:04:32,960
Speaker 1: of fun, and I tend to spend a lot of

1009
01:04:33,000 --> 01:04:36,680
Speaker 1: time chatting with you guys in between segments, so I

1010
01:04:36,760 --> 01:04:38,680
Speaker 1: look forward to seeing you there in the near future,

1011
01:04:39,120 --> 01:04:43,920
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Winky face

1012
01:04:49,160 --> 01:04:51,600
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics because

1013
01:04:51,600 --> 01:05:00,520
Speaker 1: it has to works. Dot com eight