Do you get the nuances of Textese?

Have you seen that ad where a wife loses her husband in a crowded train station and discovers the love for him instead? Platinum day of love. Well, if such a day does exists, N’s was when he saw me polish off an entire plate of chicken biryani with absolutely no qualms, fuss or mention of diet (unlike regular girls he says). On the other hand mine was when N corrected my spelling of ‘rejuvenate’. I’m a ‘Grammar Nazi, and used to maintain a standing rule that I wouldn’t date guys who txt lyk dis. So, when N caught me in my momentary lapse of reason, I fell for him. Period.

Textese or SMS language as we popularly know it now, developed at the time when phones were as big and heavy as TV remotes and one needed powerful fingers to press the keys. Text messages were expensive and there were only 160 characters to express oneself before the phone balance dipped. It was a handy and made testing faster. Now with Wi-Fi messaging, feather light phones, touch screens, and other paraphernalia you think tesxtese would have died a natural death, but it hasn’t. It has merely evolved. Textese can be a bane or boon of today’s society depending on which team you are in; the Nazis or the busy bees that don’t have the extra second to add the ‘O’ before they reply ‘K’ to the essay you just sent them. I wonder what they do with all the extra time.

Smart phones have made us extremely lazy. We cringe to pick up the phone and have an actual conversation. We’d rather text with our own textese, our unique language with customised vocabulary and personal style. We devise new norms to adhere to and to judge others by. For instance, purists would tell you that the exclamation mark was traditionally used to indicate surprise. When you shout ‘surprise! ,‘at a surprise birthday party for example. Or is used to show vehemence, like “Get off my spot!” But off late, the punctuation mark has been going on overkill. “Hey!!! What are you doing?!! “, says the friend who frankly doesn’t give a damn or the dramatic ‘thank you!!!” when a person compliments one’s profile picture. Well, I have just failed to get long along with these excessive exclamation users. Maybe my phlegmatic personality is allergic to their overly sunny disposition.

 A ‘hey’ with a single ‘y’ has become an unenthusiastic, akin to calling a stranger on the road. ‘Heyy’ shows interest. ‘Heyyy’ is borderline flirting and ‘Heyyyyy’is just plain creepy. Many would agree that ‘Lol’ (laugh out loud) hardly stands for what it started out with. Now ‘Lol’ is the new ‘okay’. “Hey guess what, I bumped l bumped into Neha. Remember her?’ “Oh ya.lol”.  At times it’s measly politeness, especially when a friend says something supposedly witty and you aren’t too amused.  Likewise, a plain ha-ha has become lame, fake almost. The next time you want to find out if your joke is genuinely rib tickling look for the ‘Hahaha’. More ha’s the better, except when it’s Muahaha. That’s Joker having the last laugh.

The other day I was chatting with a friend on Whatsapp and had to cross the road. So I quickly typed ‘brb’ and shut the window. Fifteen minutes later when I checked my phone, he had left me a sermon on how the acronym for ‘be right back’ is used only in shady chat rooms and not with close friends anymore. Really? News to me.

You think teachers must be a happy lot, with all phones coming with an in-built dictionary. It requires determination to defy the auto-correct and get a spelling wrong. Unfortunately, they are far from it. Exam papers and class assignments now lay strewn with acronyms and shoddy spellings. While students type out superlative text messages on autopilot, the same dictionary slowly erases the memory of all spellings from their brains. Come exams, they stutter and start scribbling to mask their mistakes.

To text with ease or text traditional?  To nit-pick or let it go. Is he being friendly or flirty?  Goodnight or nite? That’s the question. Maybe the Emoji will be our answer.

-Originally published in The New

Indian Express, Bangalore on 31st October 2015

Lost in the Emoji Explosion

157,439,872. That’s the number of smileys being used this very moment as you sit reading this. One balmy Tokyo afternoon, Shigetaka Kurito sat away plodding on his computer, silently creating history. Little did he realise that the battery of seemingly ridiculous, infantile yellow cartoons that he was coding were soon going to be used by the world in ginormous proportions. Emoji, as they soon came to be called, appear to be throwback to our times of communicating through pictograms and hieroglyphics. As we sit immersed in our little phone worlds, these surrogate faces give expression to our emotions as we talk to each other through screens and say the most important things via texts.

So is the Emoji only for the emotionally stunted, the wallflowers, and the inarticulate?  I think not. We all use Emoji when it’s convenient.  Research states that giving the smiley strong completion is the heart symbol. Love is indeed blossoming everywhere. However I strongly believe that the grinning face emoticon cannot be far behind.  With its half shut eyes and sheepish grin this little face is often used when we have said something embarrassing, when we brag about ourselves, but don’t want to sound too boastful, when we post mushy pictures on Facebook and dread being the object of ridicule amongst our friends.  The grinning face is a face-saver, an excuse for any action. You can text your friend that she looks like a little tomato in that red dress, add the grin and she will probably think you’re being funny. Truth sugar-coated as cute always works.  Emoji soften our emotions and thus been the greatest invention in recent times, saving fights, averting miscommunication and making everything light hearted. They are also very popular among the youth, especially while flirting or engaging in sexual banter. Emoji-sexting maybe juvenile, but it does take the stigma out and allows them to converse with ease, without any moral implications hounding their minds.

Apparently more women use the Emoji than men, corroborating the popular perception that we women are more volatile beings. But a handful of men do find these emoticons handy especially when they want to apologise. “Girls never seem to be satisfied with just a sorry, so I add a string of hearts, throw in a couple of teary eyed faces and factor in the feel- goodness,” said one of my friends. I frantically rummaged through the keyboard to send him a middle finger emoticon.(its time we got one!). For a long time I was probably judgemental too, labelling guys who used the Emoji excessively as effeminate. But perhaps more than effeminate, my grouse should have been that Emoji is now a form of escapism, a tool to hide behind the real emotions. When we have nothing to say but want to be polite we reply with a smiley. When a friend sends what is the 100^th picture of her baby that week, and we are mentally exhausted of using the word cute, we add a few kissing smileys and rest in peace. Last heard, the ISIS is using the Emoji to sound warm!

The Emoji have evolved over the years into not only a language but also a full time hobby for some people, (I am glad we don’t know them!) who translate popular songs like Beyoncé’s ‘ Drunk in love’ and books such as the ‘Moby Dick’ into pages of these graphics. If you want to get a detailed report on your social well-being, emojianalysis .com can do a quite interpretation for you.  Old souls who have no clue if the two hands picture is clapping, praying or saying “Oh god leave me alone’ can visit emojipedia.com that will educate you that its high five.

 

Nevertheless the Emoji are fun, now that all our phones are socially inclusive and offer an interesting palette to choose from, from skin colour to sexual orientation. There are three types of kissing faces, (denoting different relationships? Beats me.), dancing girl, funny cats, a yummy chicken leg and even a pile of smiling poop, which I believe is a lucky symbol for the Japanese! Well, one only hopes that these faces continue to augment our communication and not replace words entirely!

-Originally published in The New Indian Express, Bangalore on the 17th of October 2015