It appears, that at the age of 30 something, I have reached a point in my life where technology is getting away from me. Facebook is easy, addictive and well within my comfort zone. I like Facebook because you get to judge people without having to speak to them or interact with them in anyway if you so choose. Twitter on the other hand, is really hard – what the heck are the #’s all about and I have just discovered that I should be using Tumblr as a writer, whatever that is.
Today, modern technology just got a whole lot harder because for the first time, I attempted to use the emojo/picture thingies on my phone to express my thoughts, rather than laboriously type put words. Not good for a writer but an interesting experiment all the same. Except it wasn’t interesting. It was infuriating. This attempt was pre-coffee so I have every right to feel like I want to start killing people.
First of all, I wanted an emojo/picture thingy of coffee so I could send a text with a picture of someone getting punched which was supposed to be a quick and clever way to say ‘if you fail to bring me a coffee, you will get punched’. But of course, my phone emojo/picture thingy does not have a picture of a coffee cup. Now I don’t know what kind of world the creator of these things lives in, but it is obviously a hell dimension. No other dimension would consider a world without a need for a coffee emojo/picture thingy. I have pictures of a syringe, a hammer, and 20 million cats doing a variety of things but no coffee cup.
Needless to say I had to spend my entire morning ranting on Facebook about the absurdity of this and writing this blog rather than preserving precious pre-coffee energy.
Delving into this new world further, after seeing a clever response to my Facebook post about this issue which had deeply affected me, I spent valuable baby free time sifting through the hordes of relatively useless pictures to find one that exactly represents what I was trying to say without the use of words. It appeared to be a woman with her hands raised as if to say “Wow! Clever! Yay! Amazing!” and so forth. I pressed send, enraptured in my own brilliance, only to find that the picture changed to two blue hands. Now I look like a complete idiot.
Having a go at using these emojo/picture thingies was worth it because they may have made me look cooler than I actually am and anything that makes you look cooler is worth trying. But I think we have established that I am not very cool (two blue hands – what the hell?!). It was also worth a go because I really like Ancient Egypt and they used hieroglyphs which are pictures, not written words that come from an alphabet as such, so I figured if it was good enough for them, it might be good enough for me. It was not good enough for me.
As a writer, when did I become so lazy that I thought I could use these emojo/picture thingies rather than words? Words that I have spent years and too much money mastering? Are these emojo/picture thingies really essential to living in this modern world of technology? Do they make life better? No of course they do not. They are yet another way that multi-million dollar corporations get to take our hard earned money. When used in a text message, the message becomes a MMM and therefore costs money where normal text messages are usually free. Nice try multi-million dollar corporation but you can take your emojo/picture thingies and shove them up your (insert emojo/picture thingy of a donkey or butt here).
However in my short foray into using these useless pictorial expressions of feelings or circumstances instead of words I did find one positive use for them. If you want to imply violence towards another person, it is much safer to do so using pictures rather than definitive words. A picture of someone getting punched is much nicer than writing ‘I will punch you in the face’. The picture makes it rather funny and a little bit cute. Well, maybe not for the person receiving the threat of violence through the emojo/picture thingy, but it makes the sender feel better about being an advocate for violence when the situation calls for it.
Nope, I will not lower my standards to use these emojo/picture tingies until there is an emojo/picture thingy of someone getting punched and a coffee cup.
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