Emoji’s can tell a whole story here in Seoul. I am on two girl chats, and we have spent the entire term of the pandemic illustrating or emphasizing our woes via Emoji. Whoever or whatever draws, animates, and code emoji (is the plural ‘emoji’ or ‘emojis”??), has created an entire industry.
Kakao, the most popular chat application in South Korea, displays and sells thousands and thousands of emoji in its bottom bar galleries (the panels on the bottom of the chat screen where you can choose your emoji).
There are bouncing bears, “hipster mom”, an emoji for every animal or cute object on earth, an emoji for every single experience or expression you can imagine.
This one is blue stress-eating girl. My girlfriend literally sent it when she revealed she was signing up for a business writing class that gave her major anxiety. As you can see, the girl is literally doing the equivalent of what all girls do everywhere when we cannot handle stress… stuff our faces with some crunchy cookie-like thing and cry. And wear yellow matching outfits.
This is the Kakao bear. He is very famous, and there are huge replicas of him in Kakao Line stores, where Korean people line up to take pictures with him. In this animated emoji, he is kicking around the can of popcorn. Girlfriend wanted to transition from a conversation about weight loss to a conversation about shopping about bikinis. So she kicked the can emoji.
Look at these emoji. My two girlfriends sent these emoji after we had a conversation about a hot guy at the gym. I asked for a picture. Girlfriend 1 said, wait, I’ll get banned and escorted from the gym if I violate someone’s privacy. They subsequently sent these emoji to show how one gets exiled from one’s one life. Like lightning striking. Like people whispering about you behind your back.
SEE HOW EMOJI CAN EMPHASIZE A CONCEPT WITHOUT SAYING ANYTHING??
It’s amazing. It is horrifying. It is pretty funny, most times. It can be a substitute for real interaction, since we are chatting more than we are talking in real life, these days.
It just seems awfully poignant that some computer animators have found another outlet for our dollars and our emotions and our virtual socialization. Awfully poignant or awfully profitable. I leave you with weird tear-dropped shape animated figure scratching her or his or its or their head with Asian back scratcher.
