Digitised Emotions--------
Seldomly anyone will disagree with the the fact that our ever increased entanglement with a parallel cyber world vis-a vis our day to day interaction has put us simultaneously in two different worlds. Now we have almost everything in this virtual world which we have in our real world from financial stake to security concern to sociopolitical life to cultural call. This in turn has developed a well knit community, multiple peer groups and various clubs to diversify our outreach and connection as we see ourselves at whatsApp or facebook or twitter. So, a sort of replication of everything which we hav in real world.
Most of us end up spending a big share of our available time on these social media or interacting at virtual institutions in terms of banking, shopping , playing games, seeking entertainment ,socializing clandestinely or openly. So, the moot question is whether our behaviour too has got digitised or standardised or in other words, have our emotional expression, body language, gesticulations and so on too become quite mechanical set in few emoticons or emojis?
Incidently, emoji is Japanese word where 'e' means picture and 'moji' means character which resembles with the English portmanteau emoticon(emotion+icon). While i was reading about "post-truth" as the most used word of 2016 as per the Oxford dictionary, out of curiosity, I moved to similar status of 2015,ccoincidentally it was "emoji". Thus, it depicts the quantum of its usage in our daily usage.
"😂" (khushi k anshu ) was the most used emoji. We may have 'n' number of such emojis or figurative gesture to express ourselves but, can it truly depict in full sense what we mean to convey that moment. The very human idiosyncrasy is unique , it has umpteen expressions each depicting a different set of emotional story. But, our efforts to digitize emotions in few emojis may be oversimplification. It tries to standardise human emotion, expression across the culture, language, territorial distinctiveness, race, religion. Do we have different mode of expression of crying or laughing or showing smouldering face or frowning?No. So, such standardization effort is not unwarranted. While laughing one is bound to show teeth, while crying one has to moist one's eyes, and if a beauty passes nearby, one is tempted to blink ones eyes. Similarly, in case of sending kiss, one is automatized to roll down red betel sign from 'mukhdwar'. However, problem arises in this emoticon world when our communication increasingly gets shrunk.
We many a times don't express well and hide behind emojis or the very available emojis are unable to express well.
Post colonialist or post modernist observers may find these emojis to be ethnocentric depicting these as mostly products developed world life. But do we have expressions of our own peculiarity conveying emotional messages of third and fourth world society? If not, how do we go about it. Therefore, before our emotions get confined in few emojis ,don't we need to diversify in ample number bringing it closer to real expressions? Yes,We do need.
Seldomly anyone will disagree with the the fact that our ever increased entanglement with a parallel cyber world vis-a vis our day to day interaction has put us simultaneously in two different worlds. Now we have almost everything in this virtual world which we have in our real world from financial stake to security concern to sociopolitical life to cultural call. This in turn has developed a well knit community, multiple peer groups and various clubs to diversify our outreach and connection as we see ourselves at whatsApp or facebook or twitter. So, a sort of replication of everything which we hav in real world.
Most of us end up spending a big share of our available time on these social media or interacting at virtual institutions in terms of banking, shopping , playing games, seeking entertainment ,socializing clandestinely or openly. So, the moot question is whether our behaviour too has got digitised or standardised or in other words, have our emotional expression, body language, gesticulations and so on too become quite mechanical set in few emoticons or emojis?
Incidently, emoji is Japanese word where 'e' means picture and 'moji' means character which resembles with the English portmanteau emoticon(emotion+icon). While i was reading about "post-truth" as the most used word of 2016 as per the Oxford dictionary, out of curiosity, I moved to similar status of 2015,ccoincidentally it was "emoji". Thus, it depicts the quantum of its usage in our daily usage.
"😂" (khushi k anshu ) was the most used emoji. We may have 'n' number of such emojis or figurative gesture to express ourselves but, can it truly depict in full sense what we mean to convey that moment. The very human idiosyncrasy is unique , it has umpteen expressions each depicting a different set of emotional story. But, our efforts to digitize emotions in few emojis may be oversimplification. It tries to standardise human emotion, expression across the culture, language, territorial distinctiveness, race, religion. Do we have different mode of expression of crying or laughing or showing smouldering face or frowning?No. So, such standardization effort is not unwarranted. While laughing one is bound to show teeth, while crying one has to moist one's eyes, and if a beauty passes nearby, one is tempted to blink ones eyes. Similarly, in case of sending kiss, one is automatized to roll down red betel sign from 'mukhdwar'. However, problem arises in this emoticon world when our communication increasingly gets shrunk.
We many a times don't express well and hide behind emojis or the very available emojis are unable to express well.
Post colonialist or post modernist observers may find these emojis to be ethnocentric depicting these as mostly products developed world life. But do we have expressions of our own peculiarity conveying emotional messages of third and fourth world society? If not, how do we go about it. Therefore, before our emotions get confined in few emojis ,don't we need to diversify in ample number bringing it closer to real expressions? Yes,We do need.
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