I Think Emojis Make Me Stupid

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Emojis kill brains. Emojis make you look stupid. And me too. All of us. I think emojis make us all kind of silly.

I used to be able to put my feelings and thoughts into words quite well – in a few languages if I might add. I am a translator and an interpreter. Well, have been, a couple of years ago I retired when I wasn’t at retirement age. Now I work with my hands. I thought they deserved to be used when my brain – and other brains – had been replaced with emotionless language software.

Emotionless! I don’t like being emotionless.

About ten years ago – or was it twenty? – we all started writing LOL and ROFL because from one day to the next it seemed we all were rolling on the floor with laughter – of course, still holding the keyboard in our hands. Was I the only one who did it so excessively that I often chuckled when I LOL-ed? All of a sudden I was so funny. Then came the emoticons, sometimes even with a nose. :-D, ;-), :(, xD.

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To this day, I put them behind everything, to let people know that I am friendly or sad. They mean everything and nothing. How could I leave a comment and not put 🙂 at the end, so that you know it is a friendly comment? Goodness, I would have to use words. Don’t make me use words!

Then came “haha”, which I also used too often, and much too mendacious, and still like to use today. In reality, however, this has not quite so impractical effects, because it can only be used for a laugh and also sounds like haha in real life. So I stopped chuckling, which was hard, because I am actually a chuckler (is this even a word) haha?

Then came the emojis. I only forgive emojis to people I like – and I like a lot (of people).

For a very long time, I refused to answer them:
“How are you? 😉  – No.
Or did I just not get it? (again)

I was often accused of writing unkindly. But – surprise! – a message has the same content, whether it says, “I’m on my way!” or “I’m on my way! Dashing away emoji.” At some point, I was also broken for a short time. I’ve answered with hearts to nice messages, a tearful face to depressing ones, and a fire emoji not knowing it meant the opposite. Emojis have meaning, a meaning I did not get – or didn’t want to know.

Is there an emoji school, or an emoji-crash course for people like me? Haha, LOL, ROFL 🙂

Emojis, after all, are faster and express feelings that you might otherwise have to write a whole sentence for. “Hey, I am going to a party this weekend.” Wow, it takes 2 seconds to write, where it can be so much easier to press short cut-copy-paste keys. Isn’t it?

Emojis explain and concretize words, whereas otherwise only more words would explain and concretize. If I don’t use cookies and milk emojis during the holidays, people might think I am an Ebenezer – or worse.

Maybe people use emojis because they don’t trust me to feel the right thing? Or do they use it because they think they might not be able to write with the right emotion?

But the problem is that nowadays you use emojis so that the other person knows something is wrong, and then make a phone call and express in words what the virtual message was supposed to express.

Boy does it all make sense? 🙂 😉

That’s another thing. Talking on the phone has become an extremely courageous intrusiveness, and calls are now an invasion of privacy. What if I’m brushing my teeth or I could be in the middle of an argument? If someone is allowed to call me, then that person better be one of my best friends – or a paying customer, because, for everything else, there’s WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, emails, and yes, even SMS and my beloved texts. 🙃

So I don’t even know how to describe in words anymore that I’m grumpy, hungover, sick, sad, happy, euphoric, or hopeful. That I’m full of joy or love. But I don’t have to — emojis can do it all these days! 🙏

I assume this post annoys a few people now?

I am so sorry. I just blabbered along. (Use emojis, Bridget)

I wanted to show off, hoping I could still articulate myself a bit. I was trying to put my thoughts into words.

The truth? Let me say (write) it again. I hate emojis. Emojis kill brains. Emojis make you look stupid. And me too. All of us. Emojis make us lazy. Not using emojis makes other people think you mean something evil or unfriendly, simply because the text can say anything and the emoji summarizes the written message anyway, or excuses it all with a harmless grin.

Emojis make us forget how to formulate thoughts – or at least, because of emojis, we don’t have to anymore if we don’t want to. And that annoys me.

Only the heart. I love that. My heart and your heart can’t be big enough.

Daily writing prompt
What are your favorite emojis?
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105 thoughts on “I Think Emojis Make Me Stupid”

  13. Love your post. And I have come to love emojis. I stick to the ones that are not ambiguous; though 🙏🏽 could still be misinterpreted as “thanks” or “praying for you!”
    What would I do without emojis! Like Shakespeare, I’m a (wo)man of few words. Emojis are savers for when I don’t know what to say or just want to say things in one icon 😊. I tend to use ❤️ a lot with the different colors 💙💜💛💚sometimes. I recently started using 🫶 because my daughter sends it to me.
    Thanks for your beautiful post.

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  15. Loved reading it 💞

    Your emoji-less write-up on emojis is full of emotions. The mention of phone call was hilarious and ironic too, so true!

    And I mostly get my emojis wrong 😭 (laugh or cry?) but no one has come back and corrected me so far. And possibly I would have missed an interpretation of what the emoji was trying to convey, but then that keeps away unnecessary emotions out of me 😇
    Keep writing!

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    • Thank you so much for reading and for commenting. I do get my emojis wrong as well. I suppose they call them reading glasses for a reason :-).
      The truth is I don’t know the meaning of most of them and looking it up is too time consuming.
      Thanks again! Welcome!

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  19. I can’t really fault those who prefer emojis to words. But I do agree with you here, for me I prefer typing out the letters…putting words to the test. But, there has always been a challenge expressing tone with words and letters. Good writers do it well…the rest of us may need a smiley face or a heart to shift the tone.

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  24. I tend to use 😉 to indicate sarcasm because some people don’t get me and I hate being called a b*tch. But I agree on your general point, they’re horribly overused. When my girlfriend is tired of texting? She sends 👍. This means I’m done talking, go away. Simple but effective…

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  27. I think part of the reason emojis are used so frequently is because communicating online isn’t face-to-face, and we rely on visual cues in conversation to understand the other person’s state of mind and intent. We can’t get that strictly through words, so we use emojis to fill in the blanks.

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    • You have a point and I am afraid you are right, which is actually sad. Look at literature, books are filled with letters and stories and they don’t need emojis, or other ways to show emotions. We bloggers don’t rely on emojis either. We make people feel and get our point across by just using words (please, don’t judge me by this post, THEY made me.)
      We are losing our writing skills and we don’t communicate enough from face to face, that’s why we need all the help we can get. Ok, I admit it, I sound old (am I smiling while writing the last sentence or not?)

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    • I read your comment and had to think about it. I think I like language and words and I have mixed feelings about replacing them with pictures. Like someone said in a comment. That’s how caveman communicated, and now we are going back to it 🙂

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  32. Occasionally an emoji is perfect. Back in the Covid days of lockdown all four families were listening to the Prime Minister give his nightly address, this time what would happen at Xmas… Basically it was Xmas cancelled, everyone STAY Home. I picked the weeping emoji with fountains coming out of his eyes!

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  35. The part about emojis that I don’t get is the double meaning ones. (I am going to sound like an old person now) The young generation say things that make no sense to me. My daughter often responds to questions and I am more confused afterwards than when I asked the question. I do use emojis to emphasize an idea and lots of hearts and hugs. 🤗❤️

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  36. Not only are we in a world of emojis, but we also seem to be losing punctuation too! Whole pages of words now appear without the benefit of Capital letters, commas, full stops, colons (of the full and semi varieties), and I need to constantly search to find the meanings of various acronyms…IJBOL being an example!

    🤗🧡💙💜🤗

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    • Acronyms, don’t get me started. Who comes up with them – besides me? Like you, I have to look them up, because I don’t know most of them and/or refuse to use them.
      But, there are days, when I might feel a bit wicked, then it’s payback time and I make up stuff like. Giiand and send it to my helper (who drives me bonkers with his texts). Giiand is none existing, so sooner or later he has to ask. “What, you haven’t read it?” My, my it means ‘goodness isn’t it a nice day’ stuff like that. Maybe I am evil 🙂
      (As for punctuation, no you make me reread my post sigh).

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  37. There’s a meme (wicked smile!) that floats that depicts the Egyptian hieroglyphs on top and Whatsapp emojis at the bottom, and the caption says “History repeats itself!”.

    Oh, and one time, I had the shock of my life when an older cousin of mine, who was reading aloud her friend’s message, said “yada yada yada haha”, like a full sentence! She didn’t haha! She just read the word ‘haha’, like you would read roadsigns. There was not an iota of happy energy in her haha, and my heart broke a bit that day, so I still remember that incident. I studied literature and language in college, so now my favourite emoji is this – 🤦‍♀️

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    • Normally I don’t approve comments that contain a link. Consider yourself lucky 🙂
      Thank you for commenting. Yes, it’s a bit toddler like isn’t it. Perhaps emojis are supposed to wake our inner child.

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  42. I find I can picture someone’s emotions more clearly with emojis than with words. For example, if someone wrote, “LOL,” I can’t picture this person laughing but if 😂 or 🤣 is used, I can see it. I think it just depends on what kind of person you are, whether you’re a visualization person or not. I usually just stick to the basic emojis. I can’t decipher any emoji beyond the basic emotions.

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    • I like the smileys too. The difference between normal laughter, a smile or the tears, showing that we laugh hard. But then I often think we should know the person on the other end good enough to know what makes them smile or laugh. Yes, it changed in social media, of course. Now we interact with people we have never met but consider virtual friends. Other than the written word, we don’t know much about them. Yes, smileys are helpful! Thank you for reading and commenting. Hope all is well.

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    • I would miss the internet but would still survive without it. It’s a convenient thing to have. I believe it came too quickly and we didn’t put laws or regulations in place -as we should have.
      Being offensive online is now the norm. Many say thing they wouldn’t dare saying in real life. The internet is used (and abused) these days and we all let it happen.
      Many hide behind a screen, others pretend to be someone they are not. We share everything with everybody, like it really interests someone how or coffee looked like 🙂 I don’t get it and that’s perhaps the best thing. I still use it as a tool and it doesn’t control me.

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  44. Wir verlernen ohnehin zu kommunizieren. In der Steinzeit malte man Bilder und heute drückt man auf den Knopf und unterhält sich wieder mit Bilder. Vielleicht, nennt man dies den Kreislauf der Entwicklung😂🙄🤪🙈 Liebe Grüße

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  45. Oh God, this post is so recognizable. At the peak LOL days I actually had to be very careful not to include it into university reports as a student. I can’t rule out completely that an emoji snuck into my PhD dissertation. Isn’t that what acknowledgement sections are for? It’s interesting to see how people around me use emojis, vs. how I use them. There is a whole theory behind them I suppose, but that theory seems to differ demographically. I suppressed a few hahas while writing this comment. Because of that, it feels like I’m writing a serious email to my employer, but trust me, it’s meant as a token of appreciation. I enjoyed the post, emojis and all.

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    • The thought that you might have used an emoji in your PhD dissertation is just too funny.
      You are right, the use of emojis seems to differ but not just by demography, there is also a difference that’s simply age related.

      I am glad you liked my post. I had a good time writing it and I hope it came through without the proper use of emojis. 🙂 LOL

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      • Totally! I considered age to be a part of it. My mother certainly uses more (and different) emojis than I do, for example. My younger siblings also have a different selection. For me the 😂 has always been my go-to emoji. Lately, it seems that the three monkey emojis are popular, but I’m not a fan.

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  46. Lately I’ve learned to use emojis, and I don’t think they’re stupid but a way to make it clear that I’ve read and appreciated something, but I don’t like replacing entire messages with them: words are so beautiful

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  47. I remember when I had teenagers schooling me on how to text because, apparently, I was doing it all wrong. I never did get the hang of it, according to them. They would laugh and smile at each other as if they understood something I did not. What I understood was proper grammar. LOL

    I use LOL and haha all the time. And I use these: 🩷🌷🌺😂 without thinking about it.

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    • I always look forward to your comments, Kymber. Isn’t it fun when kids teach us on the computer. One of our neighborkids is my tech guru. I think he is 13.
      “…like they understood something I did not.” Yep, that’s it.

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      • LOL The other expression I got was a sad shaking of their heads and glances to each other like, “This poor, old woman. We’ll try the best that we can, but it will never be enough.”

        It’s good to have a tech guru, though. I have one as well.

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  48. Sometimes when I want someone to know I read their WP or FB post but I’m too tired to figure out what to say I’ll just put an emoji. I know that’s a copout. But I didn’t want them to think I hadn’t read their piece. 

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    • It’s a shortcut I suppose and it’s tempting. But how about we all would leave only emojis as a comment on your posts. That would sting(k) wouldn’t it.
      I had to remind myself there as well. I love to read what people have to write and emojis just don’t do it (for me).

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  49. Well answered indeed. I am with you on this and texts/E-mails in general. Words can be interpreted by the recipient based on how they are feeling, rather than what the sender intended. When they are waiting for a text reply from someone, I have often ask my kids…”Have you tried phoning?”. They assure me that it just is not done and in fact in many cases, the only thing worse than phoning a young person is leaving a voice mail. Sigh. It is tough being a 🦕😁. Happy Saturday. Allan

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    • Oh you had me chuckling. Yes, what happened to voice mails? (Goodness, I haven’t checked mine in weeks, maybe I need to?)
      I don’t like texting, it’s like talking shorthand. This word is so unfriendly and I often wonder if the way we communicate has something to do with it?
      I am such a dinosaur myself and you know what? I am in good company.
      Are we too old? I don’t know for sure, but I feel I would feel the same if I would be thirty years younger. I love language, I love to use words (big words and small).
      Goodness the dinosaur made me chuckle. Thanks for that. Have a great weekend.

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  50. My heart and soul (and BRAIN, lol) were nodding and clapping! Boo emojis! I’m a twin~the “serious” one; when I didn’t use emojis others assumed I was mad?

    Lol~I like to write. Period. I have a friend in her 70’s that decided we’d have a text once a week of only emojis to communicate that day. It tickles me.

    You’re an amazing writer! Thank you for your years of interpreting! Currently, my little pup and I frequent a class of dear and hard-of-hearing students. Their teacher is a dear friend, too.

    I know you don’t know me well, so I hesitate using too personal of emojis. BUT, my favorite emoji? ❤️❤️❤️ yep, any color. Green is my favorite.

    I enjoyed this so much! Thank you!

    Runner up emojis~
    🏔️🥾🐾🎶🌲💕🙏🏻

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