How many times have the ‘tear with joy’ emoji in the funniest moments or the ‘see no evil’ emoji in viscerally uncomfortable times saved you during your WhatsApp chats? How often do you prefer to punctuate your texts with as many hearts and smiley faces as the recipient can handle? Everytime? Not surprised. Even the like button on Facebook now has a variety for us to express our viewpoint without the need for commenting on the post. Linkedin allows its members to celebrate the new job of their friend without actually typing ‘Congratulations.’ Instagram captions just got easier with ‘glowing star’ emoji. Well, these little pictorial representations have surely made it a bit easy for us to express and there’s no disputing the near ubiquitous presence of emojis in our lives.

Leora feels that words supported by emojis convey the emotional tone of the message better, after all it’s us- the millennials who have given birth to our own type of language. 😛 Speaking in linguistic terms, emojis have become a good source of expressing the real stance. In fact, in the age of rapid texting, emojis are life saviours – be it replying to a text to which we have no answer with a simple smiley or preventing any miscommunications! Ofcourse, no wrong indications should be sent to the other end, because not so obvious, the emotions are now viewed through ‘emojis’ that are used in the so-called mandatory virtual communication. 

Coming to the funnier part, not using emojis is considered rude or that it is going serious there. Removing the profile picture from Whatsapp is taken as the person is suffering from some serious mood swings- maybe a fight with a best friend or breakup from a relationship. A long Whatsapp birthday wish and post over instagram is considered more important than wishing over call or in-person. The red heart is only for the love of my life and oh be cautious of sending that kiss emoji to your crush…Hah! Seriously?
That’s probably the *new escape plan* of millennials. Running away from things is the easiest path to choose and hiding our emotions is the skill we have mastered through the smileys (of course ya, we’ve got it personalized for every damn thing, oh you technology!) For the worst part, we’ve started judging the nature of a person merely on the basis of their preferred emojis and its application in this virtual world. And guys in doing so, we’ve somehow lost ourselves and the whole beauty of the moment there. 

Leona and Eira have a few questions to the open forum here- why can’t an ‘I love you’ without any emoji be as true as an ‘I love you with 50 red hearts?’ Is it not important that while texting ‘I’m doing good :D’, we actually have that ‘D’ smile on our face? Or, for that matter why do we even try to hide our emotions behind the emojis? Obviously, all of us thought this atleast once, but then we know, ‘no one cares.’ Agreed.
Honestly, we are fans of emojis too. But, the only thing we’d like to mention is to not let this new world of little pictures rule your feelings or the real emotions. There is no set rule. Infact, words and emojis go parallel. Just be your raw self and try building the connections such that be it words or emojis or both- all are equally enough and capable of connecting you with the vibe of the person and the moment! There is no dire need to garnish your emotions and replace your words with emojis when the whole essence of conversation is getting lost.