EMOJIS AND EMOTIONS

Have you ever tried to talk with a person online and you say something but they perceive it as another thing? Case of caring gone wrong? I remember telling one cold girl (opposite of hot is cold), that I loved her and she took it personal and was ranting on how boys lead girls on that they do not want to spend the rest of their lives with bla, bla, bla…yen, yen, yen… in my church mind, I was just spraying the love of Christ like a Gucci perfume all over her Dm not knowing she thought I was shooting shot. I also remember talking to a superior and he said something and I replied “Okay sir”. He felt I was insulting him and wasn’t paying attention.

Why do these things happen? They happen because communication has certain elements that make it concrete; things like tone, body language and gestures, method of delivery and choice of words. All these are important fragments that engage the five senses of your audience and help them understand completely what is being said. Before language evolved into coherent words, it was first about sounds and the gestures that followed, so instinctively we communicate more emotionally than logically. It is not the “I am sorry” that solves the issue, it is how/with the emotions you said “I am sorry” that earns you the points. In this communication game, words come last. 

You can call your best friend a fool and she won’t slap you, why? There is an understanding that has been established through these communication tools. She recognizes that the tone you used isn’t a tone for battle, the body language was friendly, the choice of words in itself might be harsh, but the tone, and body language gave it off. When relating with a person through a screen you can’t see them, you can’t hear them, whatever it is that you would be reading would be based on an assumption your mind would be making. An assumption that your mind created from the past experiences you have had with them. In a bid to cover this lacuna, social media engineers are devising means to make social media interactions more animated than virtual.

Let’s look at some of the tools they designed:

1.      Emojis (Emoticon): I have another protégé his name is Shola Chea, he uses the emoji completely opposite to what he intends to say and he is always leaving me confused. Now, there are faces you make naturally when talking with a person; emojis are meant to mimic those faces or those gestures. Emojis make it really easy for us to figure out the emotion behind your statements, what your face could look like when you said something, or how you felt about a certain statement. Emojis convey your emotions. If you don’t know what an emoji is for, copy it and paste it on Google then hit the search icon and it would show you what the emoji means. Don’t send me a black heart 🖤saying you love me; black hearts are for dead lovers or lovers that you are mourning. Or the flirty moon🌚; it’s for flirting people of Jesus! 

Now they are some special few who pride themselves in abusing emojis, they use them to escape conversations (which I was a part of until the word changed me😌) you people’s maturity level has passed thermometer gauge—there is no degree to it, I just said let me tell you, you are the reason why people hate chatting (ndi, one word answers oshi!😒) 

2.      Voice notes: let me start by saying this, if you haven’t noticed, except you are a billionaire, no one has that patience to listen to your 20minutes voice note—eh?!😱 20 minutes of what?! Maybe you don’t read the news; let me help you, our attention span has reduced oh! It is places like www.livingwordmedia.org that has helped some of us lengthen our own, so if you know you are not rich, maybe a ministry gift, or Otedola’s daughter, better respect yourself and shorten it😑. I hope you know if I am listening to your voice note I can’t do much with my phone? That thing that you want to say, type it. If you type it you would get tired and shorten it.

😏Eh-eh, back to what I was saying ojare! While emojis handle the part of gestures and facial expressions, voice notes handle the aspect of tones. Your tone is really important. That’s how babies recognize that you are angry, that’s how you can tell if a person is sad over the phone or disgusted, that’s how dogs can tell if their owner is happy or disappointed. So, in communication your tone matters much. If someone is misunderstanding what you are saying, send them a short voice note where you explain yourself in clear terms.

3.      Stickers and GIF: these are amazing 😊 tools that can add color and fun to your chats if you know how to use them. These stickers and GIFs say all you want to say but without too many words and they are funny. They add a flavor of sarcasm to your chats and make them lively. When they aren’t used properly, they look messy and annoying. I want to give an award of the best constructive use of stickers to Otito Nwachokor, Ejide Temitope, Onyinyechi Ibiam and anyone who wants to join them.

4.      Video calls and voice calls: I think there should be a law that if you call me without asking for consent it is auditory rape, or social media rape😌. I think it would be polite to notify the person before trying to place a video call across or a voice call except you people have an understanding. Irrespective, still talk to them about it. Social media engineers tried to make this as real as possible with video calls. I know some of you enjoy skyping because the place you live in Nigeria has “7G” network (there is no such thing like that), but some of us live in Ajangbadi, or in one village near the city of Uturu and cannot sustain a video call without it looking like you got stuck on your screen like a glitched wall paper. But despite the network issues, video calls have all the fragments of communication save physical touch—you’d love it—except for the awkward silence that just happens. 😏 

Nothing replaces physical meetings and communicating face-to-face; nothing! Communication should engage your five senses to be successful and fun. So, take out time out of your busy schedule to visit someone, if you can’t place a call, if you can’t leave them a text with emojis everywhere. Let them know you missed them and can’t wait to see them again.

Mr. Abbaly once said to me “son, if you do not communicate you leave the mind no option than to fill in the gaps with assumptions and the mind does a dirty job”

PS: please don’t type in short form, don’t invent a new language and try to shove it down our throats, please, we are begging you. Type well, punctuate well, use slangs the ways slangs should be used, if you say English is not your mother tongue, then type in your mother tongue, we can use Google Translate at least it would be coherent. Finally don’t use words you do not know the meaning of, don’t come here to form learned colleague with me.😑😑

PSS: that's Shola's picture.😌

You dey feel me? 😉