Emojis are modern-day hieroglyphics, easy to use when gestures or words aren’t possible. Coming up with them must have been a fun job, right? The bursting head surprise face. The green sick face. Heart eyeballs. The broken heart. They can convey so much without a single word.
Maybe too much, apparently. Emojis, it seems, can be fraught with misinterpretation. Forget cute or funny, they (like most other things) have become a potential minefield in the vast expanse of human communication. What might be crystal clear to one person is nonetheless unclear to another.
Who would have thought even a few short years ago that smiley faces and symbols from the internet would break new ground in courts of law all over North America. A CNN report last week said that, as more emojis show up in court cases, attorneys are arguing about what they mean. In response, judges and courts are scrambling to assess their value as evidence and set precedent.
Take the heart emoji. It’s very multi-purpose. Sometimes I’ll throw one under a picture of a beautiful sunset on Instagram. Sometimes I’ll send one to a friend going through a hard time, a simple shorthand that reminds them (as if they need it) that someone cares. To most people I’m sure that emoji in particular has positive connotations.
Under certain circumstances, however, that heart might be interpreted as something not so positive. Some people interpret it has sexual harassment, I’ve read. Me sending it to my friend of 30 years might have different intentions and insinuations than an uncomfortable exchange between strangers.
And the emoji with Xs for eyes was entered into evidence in a Massachusetts murder case by prosecutors who claimed it proved the sender was threatening the victim leading up to his death, and also implied that it acted as intimidation for those privy to the online communication.
Even a simple smiley face needs context, nowadays. It came up as evidence in a Maryland case involving work leave and possible harassment, when a manager sent it to an employee who had just been terminated. They employee argued that the smiley face amounted to the former boss gloating about having been successful in having the man terminated, and that the gloating constituted harassment.
Though emojis-as-evidence are more common in criminal and sexual harassment cases, courts aren’t necessarily being flooded with them yet, though cases featuring them as a consideration have more than doubled since 2017. And with the prevalence of smart phones and social media, I expect that number will only increase substantially over time.
It’s not just the courts that are wrangling with emojis, either. Apple and Google are finding out that symbols like that are far from being a universal language. The smiley face is interpreted as sarcasm in China, and the thumbs-up is considered vulgar in the Middle East.
Earlier this year, the Unicode Consortium, which sets the standard for emojis, announced that by the second half of 2019 it would introduce a slew of new ones, including one for dumplings, a melting ice cube, and several to expand representation of skin shades and disabilities. It’s amazing how many are available.
We shouldn’t worry about being too general in our symbolism for long, because I’m certain the list of emojis will continue to expand into infinity. At last count, if you add the 230 new emojis (which include 171 just-introduced variants for gender and skin tones), there are currently a whopping 3,053 emojis to tempt your trigger finger. Overwhelming? Sure. As someone who publishes their writing, I know there’s no guarantee of achieving clarity regardless of how many choices you have. Sometimes the message gets lost in translation when it comes to vocabulary, and I’m going to assume the same will apply to symbols.
It’s only a matter of time before someone somewhere will give emojis their own dictionary and thesaurus. I’m sure by then we’ll need it.