When discussing emojis, my mind always turns to Discord and the ultimate power granted to me by the use of custom emojis. In essence, on Discord, if you own a server (and anyone can have their own server), you can upload up to 50 images that get turned into emojis:
As you can see, once the emojis have been uploaded to a server, anyone can use them in that server. Moreover, if you have the paid service, "Discord Nitro," you can use any emoji from any server you're in anywhere, be it in another server or even direct messages (DMs). Because of this, people will sometimes ask me to add emojis to servers they're in:
This is so that, as you can see, she can use an emoji she likes inside the server, or even everywhere if she has Discord Nitro. Moreover, I have this Nitro ability, but my friend does not, which results in some unique slang as they use words to replace specific emojis I use a lot in conversation.
Here you can see what they say: perish, which is the code of that particular emoji, :perish:, which in turn is a meme. For a few more examples of how peculiar this can get,
As you can see, the emojis become shorthand for a certain emotion, as McCulloch talks about this chapter, and customization of emojis allows easy shorthand use of a lot of hyperspecific memes, especially visual ones like reaction gifs. When this ability is taken away, like in the DMs of people who don't have Nitro, rather than reverting to explaining with words, a lot of people will just state the emoji code out loud as we see my friend doing above.
I think this is all very interesting and a fascinating form of both "hieroglyphics" in online communication and the kind of "format transfer" in conversation we've talked about in the past. I hope you guys find it interesting too!
This is really interesting! And it is, as you've mentioned, a version of what we were talking about on here last week. Think about how well you have to know someone and a community to be able to use that shorthand and *then* the fill-in for that shorthand when the emoji aren't available. It's a real testament to the "realness" of these communities, which I think is lovely.*
ReplyDelete*Obvious disclaimer that not all online communities like this are lovely. I see you, QAnon, incel groups, etc. ;)
You know, it's interesting that you bring up the in-speak of the, ah, less-than-wholesome communities, because my brother, who is older and travels in male-dominated sections of the internet, will often come to me with slang help when he hears a new term. His primary concern isn't understanding exactly what it means, which he can pick up from context, so much as ensuring he doesn't accidentally say something that red-flags him as an incel or a redpiller or something. I remember that we had one particularly long and interesting conversation about how "simp" was offensive for approximately five seconds before k-pop stans got ahold of it and said "oh, actually, f*ck you it's ours now." Now the meaning is totally divorced from its original context, and I think that's incredible!
DeleteWow, this is all really interesting, Lee! I feel like I'm not smart enough on the computer side of things to absorb it all, maybe? But I love your connection to hieroglyphics (it gives me a visual) and how there seems to be a code, within a code, within an image.. it's a lot for the not-exactly-tech-savvy like myself, but it's also so intriguing.
ReplyDeleteThroughout Unit 4, I've found myself thinking about emojis in a new way, and how they connect or relate to other symbols in throughout history and how we seem to be, again, forwarding what has already been done and how that's really cool.
Yeah, exactly, Julie! It becomes this weird sort of... recursive, self-referential language, and because each server will have different emojis, each one will develop its own emoji-based communication, slang, etc. It's definitely A Lot, especially if you're "new in town," so to speak. I'm on one particular server where the age range is WAY lower than me, and I swear it's like they're speaking emoji-Latin sometimes.
DeleteWow I never knew that you could create your own emoji’s! I agree sometimes emoji’s fall short or there’s not an emoji for something still and this is really helpful information to know. I am not very tech savvy when it comes to this as I most likely use the same for emoji’s for everything
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