My friend replied to my text with seven sets of animal paw prints, interspersed with pink hearts and rounded off with a cat face.
This was in reply to me telling her it had been nice to see her when she stayed with us in West Cork.
I squinted at these emojis, trying to make out whether I was looking at ‘What a lovely country house you have’ or ‘What a dump! Cats and dogs everywhere, which is obviously your thing, but I won’t be coming again’.
Earlier that day, another friend replied to my message asking how she was with a burst of gold stars, some prayer hands and a smiley face. Was she all right, or had she dropped dead and started texting me from heaven, using the celestial wifi?
This is the future. Staring at faces with tongues hanging out and faces vomiting green sludge
More to the point, will we all speak to each other using only emojis one day? I think it is perfectly possible. And maybe it will be a good thing, once grammar and punctuation hit (or even hits) rock bottom. I went to La Bohème at the London Coliseum the other evening and, baffled by their interpretation of it, I looked at the English National Opera’s website afterwards and was horrified to find this, which I reproduce exactly as written: ‘La bohème is a timeless piece of opera which seeks to explore the themes of enlightenment, good versus’ [sic] evil, and friendship…’
Note the making of versus possessive. While lecturing us about enlightenment, which I’m pretty sure Puccini wasn’t bothered about, they show themselves to be utterlyunenlightened by using incorrect grammar. Even the English National Opera, with its English surtitles on a digital board above the stage where the opera is being sung in English, cannot be trusted to get English right.
It is almost time to give up on the attempt to sing, speak or write in our native tongue at all. We must resign ourselves to these infuriating emojis and to working out what they all mean.
Let us start with prayer hands, which is surely the most infuriatingly ambiguous. ‘Folded hands is used as a gesture of prayer, thanks, request, and greeting, as well as to express sentiments of hope, praise, gratitude, reverence and respect,’ says one definition. ‘This is a symbol meaning love, warmth, caring, affection,’ says another.
In other words prayer hands means anything. They are the pictorial equivalent of saying: ‘Mmm.’
Next, facial expressions. In a recent exchange, I texted a neighbour that the builder boyfriend would pop round soon and check her boiler as she was worried about it.
She replied with a face with eyes closed and the mouth less than half smiling. I could not even see what that expression was without wiggling my contact lenses sideways. It looked a bit sarcastic, like she was saying: ‘If you really cared about my boiler maybe you would have come round earlier.’
I asked her what time was convenient and she replied that any time would do, then red heart, smiley face, kiss kiss, burst of stars.
A shower of emojis generally means the person is trying to be nice, I think. So I heaved a sigh of relief. We are getting to the point where unless someone texts you an entire row of kisses and hearts you are worried they are angry with you.
The colours of faces is becoming an issue. I never thought to pick anything other than the standard yellow.
But I notice other people are selecting colours now. My IT man, who is Irish and pale-skinned, has a slightly tanned thumbs up. I wonder whether he is making a political point to do with the Troubles or placing himself in an ethnic category so as to sympathise with the Palestinians or other freedom fighters, as the Irish often do. Then again, I know he likes to go to Rhodes. So perhaps his slightly more golden thumb is simply meant to show him tanned from his holiday?
People choose the most unlikely emojis. The builder boyfriend sends me those girly unicorn heads adorned with hearts, and sometimes he does a giant mouse with hearts for eyes. He does prayer hands too, and I am certain he has no idea what they mean, as he puts them on the end of phrases like ‘Yes, OK’.
Another friend litters her texts with a woman holding up her arms as if to say: ‘What can I do?’ No matter what I say to her. I feel we are going to fall out soon. I don’t like her any more, because of these shrugging gestures.
This is the future. Staring at faces with tongues hanging out and faces vomiting green sludge and eyes inside a triangle of what looks like a pile of poo. There is an emoji for everything. The only problem is, no one knows or cares which one is which. The result is somewhat less efficient than a series of Neanderthal grunts. At least by the tone of our grunt when we were cave dwellers we used to communicate to each other what mood we were in.
It took me years to work out what two particular friends were saying when they sent me a red ‘100’ with two red lines under it. It means 100 per cent and saves them having to type the phrase ‘I agree’.
What does a face with green dollar signs for eyes mean, or an ethnic minority guardsman in a bearskin hat?
And when do you use the figure in a burkha with what looks like a sword or a gun slung across their back? That should not exist under anti-terror law, surely, and yet there it is, between the waiter and a man in a Dracula cape wearing a purple Venetian mask.
If you pressed all three in a row, followed by a question mark and some prayer hands, I guess you’d be saying: ‘I could get work as a waiter, but I’m thinking of going jihad, or maybe I should try acting classes. What do you think? I’d be grateful if you could let me know your thoughts as I do so respect your opinion.’
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