According to Reader’s Digest writer Claire Nowak, the first emoticon ever recorded was published in Puck magazine as a set of four in 1881. Precursor to what is understood as a ubiquitous part of the text-based communication we’ve come to know in our smartphone era, the emoji’s forefather, the emoticon, may be worth clinging to in our advanced era.
Described as “typographical art” by Puck, the cultural idea of the emoticon, and of the integration of the visual as an integral part of text-based communication had a long way to go from the four starter faces. A journey that would begin, once again according to Nowak, back in 1982 when a member of faculty sought to keep communications on the Carnegie Mellon Message Board clear using two emoticons: one for serious threads and one for fun threads.
From there proliferation of emoticons became a natural next step, finding use in emotional expression over text, and within the hardware limitations of the era. Common parlance may not have entirely shifted under their weight, but the wheels of body language replacement were greased. The need for such a replacement was so ubiquitous in fact, that there was a concurrent development of a similar emoticon usage trend in Japan in the form of kaomoji.
Innovation on this homegrown form of expression lay right around the corner with Shigetaka Kurita, and his work with creating the first emojis for the mobile company DOCOMO, according to Arielle Pardes of the WIRED. His creation’s spread from 1999 was first between cellphones companies in his native country, but with the world-wide adaptation of more complex phone technology, the emoji would find use beyond the 12-by-12 pixels Kurita first made.
This however isn’t the end of the story in my eyes, as a means of communication the usage of the emoji in our modern era can ring simplistic. A faux standard the likes of which anyone who held onto their ability to post a real gun emoji with both hands could tell you about. Minute differences in expression the likes of which weren’t a worry of yesteryear’s emoticon. The air of committee lingering in the development of an internationally recognized cue system.
Committee that as Pardell notes in her article does, slow going, work at diversifying this pictographic language beyond the normative bounds of society, or by attempting to acknowledge the true range of the human experience. Representing the food of more cultures, adding race options, adding women period, all great strides in their own right for the establishment of this new layer of expression that in my opinion needn’t supplant its forefathers.
For the purpose of quick picture representation of gendered, racial or cultural expression the emoji still remains unmatched in its field, but for the purposes of emotional conveyance? The storied history of acronyms and emoticons which once littered netspeak as we used to understand it should still have their place in the language of today. On many keyboards perhaps they’re not as quick to be drawn as they should be to maintain this relevance, but they should be.
As a means of unisex, and variable expression the emoticon remains unmatched even by the emoji. With many expressions having a set micro-differences between their various emoticon representations and their singular emoji counterparts, perhaps the brand of frustration one wishes to express cannot be attained by a mere angry face, but certainly can using a set of Japanese characters arranged into an enraged expression.
No mention of the respect put on the digital legacy of the people who were the first to manually type the faces that have remained in use for many years. They serve as reminders that communication is something that will remain fluid for as long as there are people who wish to communicate. More fluid than any set of agreed upon emojis can express, regardless of their numerous patch updates.
There exists a future that we can create where we are unburdened by the limitations of our technology as we know it. There exists a future with room for innovation and growth that still makes use of principles which used to define our lives. One where living in harmony with our past serves not to hinder us, but enhance our everyday lives. We could step into this glorious tomorrow together.
We could achieve a better today by keeping kaomoji circulating even while using emojis.