Yes, those thumbs-up emojis you sent to a child or grandchild may have been taken with a different meaning than intended, but don't feel bad – they already knew they were cooler than you. This just proves it.
According to a Wall Street Journal interview with Erica Dhawan, who wrote a book on "digital body language," there are plenty of misunderstandings concerning emojis. For instance, to Generation Z (those born 1997-2012), a smiley emoji is often read as passive-aggressive, rather than encouraging. Sparkles can mean something exciting. Or it can be used ironically. Of course, if you were cool and 24 years old, you could tell the difference.
The bottom line for emoji use, according to Dhawan, is that older people tend to use the emoji based on its dictionary definition and the cool, younger people use it on their own definitions. Postmodernism! If emojis don't have specific meanings, is there any objective truth?
Well . . .
Anyone who has been young, had children or been around young people (which includes all of us) already knows the shift to insider meanings for words or symbols is inevitable – although many of us think we are cool enough that it won't happen to us. We'll always be current, we'll always understand the culture, we'll never be baffled by how young people speak.
IYKYK, right? All those acronyms (in this case, "if you know, you know," which itself is a weird phrase. Grandpa Brad here, saying, that's true in the same way as "if it's green, it's green" is true) and changed meanings are a way of keeping the language fresh for younger generations.
I'd do better if I had more riz (charisma) and could be low-key lit.
It was no different for millennials (born 1981-1996), who use (or used) terms like "adulting" and "bae" and "shook." My sons are of that generation and we forever were confused by them saying they were "talking" with a girl.
"Talking? Speaking? Using words?" I'd screech, pushing my glasses up my nose and adjusting my pocket protector (at least that's how I presume they saw me). I think it was more than that, but am not sure.
Every generation changes the language to make it harder for adults to identify and to stake out their own area. Think about an adult in 1985 hearing teens calling things "radical" and "bogus" and "tubular." A decade earlier, think about "catch you on the flip side" and "can you dig it?" and "keep on truckin.'"
Think about 1955 or 1935 and teens saying, "made in the shade" or using the term "beatnik" or saying "hep cat" or "aces."
Heck, my guess is that the younger generation in 1600 said things like "fiddlesticks" or "I play guitar in the band 'The Rolling Stones'" and confused the previous generation. The first post-caveman generation likely had cave paintings that confused the previous generation ("Why man have small stick in hand?" Grok asks his son. "Small stick ironic use of word 'stick!" "What?" "It's lit!")
All this highlights that we can change the way we communicate (from cave drawings to grunts to speaking to writing to speaking on phone, to texting to emojis, which are really cave drawings), but each generation will communicate in a way that their parents and grandparents don't understand.
It was true for Grok, it was true for Keith Richards, it was true for your grandparents and it's true for Gen Z.
A hint to know when your words are considered outdated by a younger generation: They always are, so there's really no "hint."
Can you dig it? Catch you on the flip side.
Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment