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Another thing going against emoji being their own language is that they can mean something completely different depending on the language they're used in. The best example being 💦. In Japanese that means panic, hurry, anxiety etc. In English it usually means something a lot more nsfw
that's just local variation, not necessarily language variation. two english speaking places could have totally different meanings for it and it can still change depending on context
In Japanese emoji use, 🙄also has no rude connotations because people read it as looking upward while thinking carefully. No way we could use it that way in English texting, lol
As an autistic person, I find emojis extremely helpful for disambiguation. I tend to take things literally or at least be very unsure if the other person is joking or not (or regarding subtler things like their mood), even in contexts where it might be clear for neurotypicals. And often, I have too much anxiety to ask for clarification. When people use emojis, it makes their intentions significantly clearer for me and reduces a lot of insecurity in interactions. Also, when I write myself, I consciously use emojis to neutralise my sometimes rather frank wording. Thank you for addressing autistic people’s relationship with emojis (also quite respectfully) in your otherwise also very interesting video! Just wanted to add this aspect to what you said. (:
Also another autistic person here, I agree with a lot of what you've said but there's also a personal addition I want to make. Which is that sometimes emojis and emoticons can add more ambiguity if the intention is unknown. For example I had a friend who never used :) and instead used ^^ or ^-^ to indicate positivity, because of this there was one time when they used :) instead and I assumed it was passive aggression based on the context of the conversation. A simple change from ^^ or ^-^ to :) completely changed the emotional impact of the message which I find fascinating (though it did suck in the moment).
Autistic here too, and Yes to all! Another problem that I have come across is that, as an anime fan all my life, I have learnt the meaning of emojis from anime facial expression, so when people from my country choose to use a particular emoji for an entirely different emotion, it’s so confusing (and annoying, at times. I mean, why would you think this 😪 is a sad face!). This specially happens to me with the blue faces (blue means fear in anime), that a lot of people use for positive emotions, like 😱 for positive surprise or just neutral, instead of the horror that I associate it with.
This paralinguistic aspect of written language is just like facial expression or gesture while speaking face-to-face. They have different values to different cultures and languages. Oh well, what am I saying 💀🗿🤡🥵🙄😔😴🤮🥰😘👉👈💖👁️👄👁️👍✨🥲🙃👀😭🤭🙈🙏
Bone-headed Rapa Nui clown is hot for sarcasm but disappointed and tired because of gross wholesome kissing. This is really due to nervousness about love and acceptance of ones lucky stars. Anti-littering advertisements give another perspective and a second look at how sad and shocked we should be at the fate of monkeys. Pray! How'd I do?
I find it so interesting how some emojis have lost their "actual" meanings in some situations. 😭 can be crying, but also laughing, being in disbelief, etc.
thank you for talking about autistic peoples difficulties w/ emojis. i’m autistic and although i’m maybe more socially adept than a neurotypical persons idea of an autistic person, i still find myself asking friends what emojis mean in certain situations. great video
His point about autistic people struggling to understand the meaning of emojis was almost immediately proven when he said that the emoji at 3:37 means “confused” lol. I’m autistic and no way in hell would I ever interpret that expression as confusion - it’s more like an “are you sure about that?” or “I think you’re lying to me” type of expression for me.
@@KasabianFan44 I think your right that it generally mens skepticism/ incredulity, maybe confusion is its official meaning but that's not normally how its used
As a person with autism I actually found this quite strange, since I don't feel like I've ever struggled with emojis or emoticons, and as far as I know, most of my friends on the spectrum don't seem to have any trouble with it either, so it kinda surprised me to hear this.
I think the 💀 emoji is a good example of how an emoji can have a meaning which is readily understood by people familiar with its use on social media, but is quite difficult to succinctly define in words
As a person with autism, I have an anecdote you may find interesting. I went to an elementary school for special needs kids, and I actually had a class there where I was tasked with memorizing which emotion corrisponded to a given facial expression, and the negative ones where always harder for me than the positive ones. To this day, unless it is super obvious (ex 😈 = mischievous) I still interperate most negative emojies as just sad.
yeah negative emotions for are also really hard but instead of think everything is “sad” but i always thought it was more aggressive and more “ill-intended” as if the 😈 was more visibly upset and knew that it could use its anger to physically, emotionally, or mentally hurt someone kinda like this emoji 👿
@@comrade_cat303 I think it means deviousness/mischievous cuz it has devil horns. It's often used in a playful kind of way, but it kind of depends on the context. Kinky people use it when flirting a lot.
3:37 - I’m sorry, 🤨 means “confused”?! I always interpreted it as either the “are you sure about that?” or the “I think you’re lying to me” kind of expression. Confusion would be this: 🤷🏻♂️
sometimes in groups an emoji gets a certain meaning. like with my friends 🗿 means something that i can’t even put into words and obviously we don’t have a sound for it but it changes meanings of sentences when used
The part about how emojis can be interpreted differently to different people really spoke to me. My friends use emojis a lot more than I do, and I always hate when they send ones like these 😊😁☺️ because to me they come off as extremely condescending
I always assumed face emojis represent interlocutor's facial expression, that would make them true pictograms. Sure you then jump to "this person is happy" or "this person is about to vomit" but that's exactly what we do when seeing facial expressions irl
But they don’t, 😂 conveys humor but doesn’t mean you are actually crying laughing; 😎 conveys “coolness” but doesn’t mean you are actually wearing sunglasses; 🤮 conveys disgust but doesn’t mean you are actually vomiting, etc. They’re sort of hyperbolic pictograms, they represent an archetypal and exaggerated form of the emotion you are trying to convey. And that’s without going into the ones that don’t even pretend to be a real facial expression, like 🤐, 😍, or 🤯.
I also think it's funny how the meaning of emojis change sometimes when you add them together, for example 👁👄👁💅🏼 or 👉🏼👌🏼, it does feel like a language somehow
You could show the representation of confusion on your face to communicate that the silly mf has 12 minutes to explain himself before you fast travel him into underworld
Yeah, confused is 😵, which confusingly is X_X on Apple devices, making more confusion. But since Apple decides what the emojis will look like¹, it's now officially X_X, and there will be a new emoji for @_@ instead. ¹ I know it's actually Unicode deciding what they should be like, but when Apple makes a decision like with X_X, 8-ball, water pistol, that becomes the standard even if everyone else already agree on other things.
2:07 I despise VPNs (or rather I despise the marketing buzzwords used to promote them), but I have to admit: this is probably the most clever segue used to introduce the sponsor of a video I ever heard
Emojis can also have a phonetic element. I dunno if people still do it, but a few years ago emoji say-what-you-see messages were a thing. It's also worth talking about how much more complicated emoji meanings can be. I mean, sending someone a vegetable emoji can be sexual harassment through the power of context. I read an article a couple years ago about how emojis can cause serious legal headaches because of the difficulty of interpreting them and then explaining that interpretation to a judge or a jury without sounding like a nutjob.
Emojis seem like co-speech gesture to me - they aid in communication, and their usage varies cross-culturally (with variation in what each emoji means in both granular and broad terms), which sounds a lot like written co-speech gesture. Co-text gesture? Idk lmao
As an autistic lady, I'm SO GLAD that there is research showing that it's not just me having no idea what emojis are supposed to represent. I have/do learn(t) them mostly by how they're used, but I also don't use them much because I don't want to use them wrongly. However I do love to send completely nonsensical bitmojis to my mother because I think that's chef's kiss emoji. Edit: I have also been on the internet for A Long Time and I have gone through emoticons so I have spent time adapting to this way of expressing yourself, even if I don't really partake in it much anymore (though I used to...rawr xD...)
something really interesting to me is how discord (maybe other apps too) allows users to create CUSTOM emoji by uploading images… theyre server-specific and in my own close knit group of discord friends, we have a ton of custom emojis that mean EXTREMELY specific things that cant be put into words… they become more and more ideographic with use… also worth noting is how some emojis feel totally different across platforms (compare 😐between apple/samsung emoji sets, or 🤢between apple/twitter sets)… i personally have autism along with most of said friends and i feel like emojis (especially custom ones) actually help me to express myself way more easily jajaja
The weirdest emoji misunderstanding I've ever faced is with this one: 😪 I've always understood it and used it as a way to add a sarcastic/annoyed/resigned tone to a message, as in: "are you serious now? 😪", but not in an aggressive way. But I was surprised to learn that everyone interprets it as "being sleepy", when this: 🥱 and this: 😴 already exist
Ah... i think knowing it came from japanese i cannot see it as anything other than a sleeping face. Watch loads of anime and only a sleeping character has that bubble from their nose growing and shrinking as they snore..... So... my brain cannot interpret it any other way 😅 im gonna guess that 😴 may have been added for westerners? Something similar happens with 🙆🏼♀️ some ppl in australia told me "it's a stretching emoji, hands stretched above head" and i burst out laughing coz this is literally just the way to say "correct" or maybe "okay" ( depending on context) in japan... so ... ppl don't realize what the emoji means and make up their own meanings.. problem now is, we have some ppls ideas and the actual meaning is forgotten/not even known O.o
this reminds me of because internet by gretchen mccolloch she argues that emojis are "emblems," in the same vein as shrugging to show uncertainty or moving your hands to show you're still talking-they add important information but you need context to understand them...she explains it much better and goes into more detail but i didnt see anyone mention that yet so thought i would lol
I'm Autistic but also hyper-empathic - and I'm also fluent in British Sign Language. The raised eyebrow emoji I've seen used and also used myself to denote ''really?!' in response to something that could be read as nearly inappropriate or risqué - sometimes deliberately said so to be comical, but not exclusively. For 'confused' I'd often just use a string of '????'. Thoughts?
I do something similar as someone else with autism. Although I use the raised eyebrow emoji more as an "are you sure about that?" rather than a response to to something risqué.
"????" is an interesting one. For me it conveys misunderstanding and confusion but in a rude way. It reads like I am very much at fault for this confusion, you don't enjoy it and want me to know about that.
I was confused when they said this raised-eyebrow emoji is supposed to mean “confused”. But that might also vary culturally. When I am confused, I frown or don’t change my face at all (which might have to do with me being on the autistic spectrum as well). To me personally, “expressing suspicion” fits this emoji much better. But also what you describe.
I do agree that 🤔 for me does not read as confusion, but rather to proclaim scepticsism. ???? Does seem somewhat aggressive. I would much rather use (?), or try to avoid emoji and similar characters completely. I rarely use emoji at all, and try to avoid tonal ambiguity through rather formal writing
As an autistic person, I've understood emojis but I've always found them cringe. I've always preferred to use emoticons instead. Though, now I use emojis slightly more leniently to spice up communication and show humour better, especially since I have slowly developed a sense of humour and understanding of satire over time.
The Unicode Consortium, the people behind emojis (and everything else text relating to computers) actually add more emojis when companies have different implementations of emojis to reduce ambiguity. I would recommend reading their interpretation of them!
yes ofc the raising of the eyebrow is still a sign of confusion, I'm just saying that cognitively that's not what's going on in people's heads. think about something like Chinese characters, many of which evolved from pictograms - somewhere along the line they must have lost their pictographic nature and turned into logographs, right? Where does that line go? That's really the question I'm asking. I don't think you're wrong btw, it's literally a philosophical question with no answer more than anything else
@@kklein I'd say it loses its meaning when you couldn't reasonably expect most people to tell what the symbol is supposed to look like (assuming they don't speak the language but have the necessary cultural baggage to understand what a symbol is if they saw it in real life). Of course that's a fuzzy line, but I'd expect most people (who come from a place where that's a face of confusion) to look at the confused face and recognize the look of confusion while I wouldn't expect people to look at a Chinese character and recognize much of anything. That does mean that some emojis wouldn't be pictogram for me, those that most people would interpret differently than their intended meaning (I would call that bad design). I add the cultural baggage claim because a sheep in Burkina looks nothing like a sheep in the UK. So even a photo wouldn't work as a pictogram. Pictograms don't necessarily work across cultural barriers.
@@mnm1273 but then what is "reasonably expect" 👀, you might understand an emoji that I don't, someone else might understand an emoji you dont - for it to be good design does everyone who looks at it have to understand it? half the people? do we exclude neurodivergent people from this account (that is, after all, what I was talking about in the video)?
@@kklein It's vague because the line is inherently arbitrary when you have a continuous progression. I couldn't put a number on it now. Basically no symbol is truly universal and so being universal can't be the standard. I suppose there's a transition from "good pictogram" to "bad pictogram" to "None pictogram that kind of looks like the original symbol" to "none pictogram". If I were given money distinguish the limits I'd ask people if they recognized the pictogram and see the success rate then after explaining the symbol ask them to categorise it (one of the four categories) and place the limits of success rates using those data sets. Still it would be fuzzy. "Neurodivergent" seems like to wide a word to give a yes no answer. If your neurodivergence means you don't understand the concept of the emotions then no I wouldn't take the opinion into account (like if you have no clue what a sheep is I wouldn't ask your opinion on the quality of my sheep emoji). And if you can recognize emotions on faces then of course it's relevant. In between it gets fuzzy. I agree obviously the lines are arbitrary but that doesn't to me the categories can't be distinct they just have debatable edges, like many human categorisations (even physics has error bars).
I usually read and use emojis as “this is what my face looks like right now (exaggerated)”. So they’re regular pictograms for me. Interpreting emotion from them is just the same as interpreting emotion from a person’s face in person. I get really confused when people send me more than one emoji. 🤨😛😖 nobody’s face can do all three of those at the same time
See, i would read those as happening one after another, not at the same time 😅 Kinda like talking to someone and they go "huh? *laugh* bleh" .. im guessing a gross joke or something triggered that 😅but yeh one after another not all at the same time
I feel like the reason one of the main reason is due to how you would define emojis especially the ones that show facial expressions. I would argue that they do, in fact, directly lead to the concepts that they are supposed to represent and not indirectly they do it as at least I see it, they are a shortened little thumbnail image shorthand for showing a picture of the person whom you were talking to face with the emotion that they are feeling in the text at least as I see it is simplified facial expressions. Permit are intended to directly convey emotion aside from the ones use non-literally such as the skull emoji, Dave seem to be very direct
I made an interesting exercise a while ago: when I worked at the zoo I had trouble remember all the tasks I had to do at first, so I made cheatsheets that summed all those tasks up entirely written with emojis. all my coworkers both admired and despised me for this
When people write text with emoji, especially English speakers, they tend to use English homophones to write. Like using 👁️👍2️⃣💃 to mean "I like to dance" because it sounds the same as "eye like two dance". But reading it in a different language will be confusing ... maybe it can also mean "correct, I can see two dancers" or "a dancer with 2 good eyes".
how would you write it in a more language-agnostic way? I've seen arrows used to mark 1st person vs 2nd/3rd person, but which is which is usually completely random. I think the 2 emoji could also be removed entirely, forcing the dancing emoji to carry the full verb phrase(it could be "i like dancing" or "i like to dance" both ways, though, so continuous vs simple distinction disappeared, assuming thats important)
@@epsi could also take a hint from existing logographic systems and express confirmation and denial through repetition of the verb(in case, for example, your symbols are already being used in a different way): A: "💃❓" ("Dance?" -> "Do you want to dance?") B: "💃" or "💃🚫" ("Dance." -> "I do" or "No dance." -> "I dont")
One of the differences between actual body language and emoticons (we called them emoters way back when, and emojis follow the same rules) is that they're intentionally added in where body language is often unconscious and compulsory. I typed that, and only _after_ I recognized I was doing it. Since I choose what to express, it still makes the online written word way different than in-person conversation.Too different to say one is analogous to the other, even if one was designed to be an analog for the other.
I hate emojis. I've never known how to use them, and people around me expect me to understand them. For the most part is just an annoyance, but when you get to the pure emoji texts, I just can't follow. And as I don't use them, people seem to think I'm always angry.
I find the use of emojis as words really interesting, because their meaning can evolve and change based on time, place, and context. They can even be used sarcastically. "I'm good. 🙂" can either be reassuring or have the exact opposite meaning.
I find online comunication to be just as close as face to face comunication. My best friend is a girl Ive never seen with my own yes outside of a screen. Emojis are not a necessity you can also wrong in [hug] and it will be understood and leave almost as much emotional impact as actually doing it irl.
Tangentially related, but the ideogram process you described is also exactly how I learn idioms as an autistic person. Idioms like “you’re the apple of my eye” make no damn sense if I think about them for even a fraction of a second. But I also don’t have trouble with understanding them in context, because I just think of them as phrases that have a definition.
In the Vietnamese community, the regular smiling emoji 🙂 means "wtf you just said", while 😢 means "cursed" (tho it is often used as a Facebook reaction rather than typed out)
I have no idea if you actually speak Swedish or not, but that pronounciation was spot on haha I wouldn't have been surprised if Swedish was your first language
To me emojis function not just as a stand-in for non verbal cues (when talking on the phone you can't see each other, yet there is no need for additional words to express body language) but also as a replacement for tonality and emphasis. A good example might be how putting two ✨️ sparkle emojis around a word makes the word more important and it add a dreamy feeling to it. It's almost like saying something in a singsong way. Using just words to express this feeling and meaning is more difficult and takes longer to both write and read.
Make a video about the Bakleks Language which is a very interesting Native American people who sadly the Cherokee do not admit of doing a genocide on which they keep denying to this day.
(2:15) Excuse me, is it legal for you to not be clear when the ad break starts, and for you to blend content and ads? I feel like you should be careful about that.
Double meaning is baked into any language, pictograms or written word. These emojis have a fixed definition, but in the larger context of a sentence, they can convey a variety of thoughts to the reader
And then emojis have certain meanings within groups - me and my friends use “😔” as a kind of jokey sadness. There’s something about emojis in general that makes them very difficult to take seriously, so “How dare you 😡😤🤬😖😠” is definitely taken as a joke, like an over dramatic way / silly way of speaking.
The rendering differences you mention are the main reason I still primarily use emoticons rather than emojis. ^_^ looks more or less the same regardless of where you're seeing it, the main difference being that sometimes the carets are larger or smaller. So because of that it becomes personal interpretation rather than rebinding that provokes different understandings. I usually only use emojis for something when I don't know how to construct a emoticon for it.
Emoticon was pre emoji and meant emotive (or emote) icon. Emoji was when they turned into actual images and not text based. At least this was my impression.
As an autistic Individuum I can say that even communicating emotions is learned like another language. Basic emotions (sadness, happiness and esp. anger) took my entire school life to learn to express appropriately. Emojis really confuse me most of the time. And more so when boomers place an emoji after every sentence.
You should look into how emoji conversation works in a lawless hellscape like discord where people can set whatever picture they want to be an emoji :crong:
I think a great example of the deviation between face-emoji pictures and meaning is the 😂 face. It seems in the English texting lexicon, the 'tears in eyes' laughter is more readily interpreted as laughter compared to 😅😆 which both represent laughing but in a more conservative way. In practice we rarely use 😂 to mean it's literally tears, but what's more is it has a dual meaning of both genuine humour and passive-aggressiveness nearly akin to 🙃 depending on the context. I would say then that "😂" is a pictogram for "lol" in all its myriad nuances. (Not the mention the Old People Facebook phenomena of poor-sighted older web users seeing the tears and not the smile, and misusing the emoji in a message like "My 14 year old kitty Luna died yesterday 😂" )
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nice video 🙂
Just as informative as the the video you did on arabic 👌
@@j2k14 That emoji’s creepy as hell 🫣
@@Isabelle-yq2zz ?
That ad segue was slick
Another thing going against emoji being their own language is that they can mean something completely different depending on the language they're used in.
The best example being 💦.
In Japanese that means panic, hurry, anxiety etc.
In English it usually means something a lot more nsfw
I mean, it’s a hurry, but another kind
Unless paired as 😰💦
Then it might appear panicked, or still nsfw, depends on context and how familiar the listener is with the dirtier meaning
that's just local variation, not necessarily language variation.
two english speaking places could have totally different meanings for it
and it can still change depending on context
In Japanese emoji use, 🙄also has no rude connotations because people read it as looking upward while thinking carefully. No way we could use it that way in English texting, lol
In Poland it means disrespect to another person, like spitting saliva.
Chinese speaker here, characters at 3:35 say “I love linguistics”. Nice easter egg.
I've learned a bit of Chinese characters and I can proudly say that I could read them phonetically as well, wǒ ài yǔ yán xué
@@CommonCommiestudios 语‘s pinyin is yǔ / yu3
@@domlee5902 thanks for the head up, it's really hard to find the ǔ character
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
As an autistic person, I find emojis extremely helpful for disambiguation. I tend to take things literally or at least be very unsure if the other person is joking or not (or regarding subtler things like their mood), even in contexts where it might be clear for neurotypicals. And often, I have too much anxiety to ask for clarification. When people use emojis, it makes their intentions significantly clearer for me and reduces a lot of insecurity in interactions. Also, when I write myself, I consciously use emojis to neutralise my sometimes rather frank wording. Thank you for addressing autistic people’s relationship with emojis (also quite respectfully) in your otherwise also very interesting video! Just wanted to add this aspect to what you said. (:
Also another autistic person here, I agree with a lot of what you've said but there's also a personal addition I want to make. Which is that sometimes emojis and emoticons can add more ambiguity if the intention is unknown. For example I had a friend who never used :) and instead used ^^ or ^-^ to indicate positivity, because of this there was one time when they used :) instead and I assumed it was passive aggression based on the context of the conversation. A simple change from ^^ or ^-^ to :) completely changed the emotional impact of the message which I find fascinating (though it did suck in the moment).
@@Sky-pg8jm Interesting. I use ^^ and (: basically interchangably. But I can totally understand how you came to that conclusion.
Mood
Autistic here too, and Yes to all!
Another problem that I have come across is that, as an anime fan all my life, I have learnt the meaning of emojis from anime facial expression, so when people from my country choose to use a particular emoji for an entirely different emotion, it’s so confusing (and annoying, at times. I mean, why would you think this 😪 is a sad face!). This specially happens to me with the blue faces (blue means fear in anime), that a lot of people use for positive emotions, like 😱 for positive surprise or just neutral, instead of the horror that I associate it with.
@@fernandagonzalez2019 humans are just confusing tbh💀
This paralinguistic aspect of written language is just like facial expression or gesture while speaking face-to-face. They have different values to different cultures and languages. Oh well, what am I saying 💀🗿🤡🥵🙄😔😴🤮🥰😘👉👈💖👁️👄👁️👍✨🥲🙃👀😭🤭🙈🙏
You're being an absolute buffoon on the internet, embarrasing to everyone. You pass out and wake up hungover, but... looking for love?
Bone-headed Rapa Nui clown is hot for sarcasm but disappointed and tired because of gross wholesome kissing. This is really due to nervousness about love and acceptance of ones lucky stars. Anti-littering advertisements give another perspective and a second look at how sad and shocked we should be at the fate of monkeys. Pray!
How'd I do?
🤪🎉🤮💀💃😫😭❌👁️🦆
@@Salsmachev ✔️✅☑️📋🧠💡. 🤩🙌. 👍💭➡️💬❗ ✔️👷♂️🚹
@@Salsmachev 💯👏
I find it so interesting how some emojis have lost their "actual" meanings in some situations. 😭 can be crying, but also laughing, being in disbelief, etc.
Emoji semantic drift? /j
💀lmfao.
Don’t worry, it’s just emoji puberty.
😅
That one is so odd too. I mean the laughing while crying emoji is right here. 😂
Guys, we all know that emoticons are still the superior way of expressing emotions over the internet, forget emojis
:0
-_- chain
Emoticons are the real emOGs
What is emoticon?
@@ilhamfatan :) :/ :D
thank you for talking about autistic peoples difficulties w/ emojis. i’m autistic and although i’m maybe more socially adept than a neurotypical persons idea of an autistic person, i still find myself asking friends what emojis mean in certain situations. great video
His point about autistic people struggling to understand the meaning of emojis was almost immediately proven when he said that the emoji at 3:37 means “confused” lol. I’m autistic and no way in hell would I ever interpret that expression as confusion - it’s more like an “are you sure about that?” or “I think you’re lying to me” type of expression for me.
@@KasabianFan44 as an autistic individual
i also don't see the confusion in the face
@@KasabianFan44 I think your right that it generally mens skepticism/ incredulity, maybe confusion is its official meaning but that's not normally how its used
@@KasabianFan44 I'm neurotypical (or so I believe) and I don't know what the hell that emoji represents other than some vague skepticism
As a person with autism I actually found this quite strange, since I don't feel like I've ever struggled with emojis or emoticons, and as far as I know, most of my friends on the spectrum don't seem to have any trouble with it either, so it kinda surprised me to hear this.
I think the 💀 emoji is a good example of how an emoji can have a meaning which is readily understood by people familiar with its use on social media, but is quite difficult to succinctly define in words
If it were easy to define in words, people would just write the words instead of use it :)
personally I see it as a compressed version of "I'm dead (💀)", I might be wrong but it doesn't seem too far-fetched
I see 💀as something like "seriously are you kidding me".
I fell down the stairs the second time today💀
💀 is either "shocked/mortified" or "I'm dead from laughing so hard"
i forgor
As a person with autism, I have an anecdote you may find interesting.
I went to an elementary school for special needs kids, and I actually had a class there where I was tasked with memorizing which emotion corrisponded to a given facial expression, and the negative ones where always harder for me than the positive ones.
To this day, unless it is super obvious (ex 😈 = mischievous) I still interperate most negative emojies as just sad.
no bc there are so many more emojis that i feel are representing negative emotions than there are positives
I thought 😈 meant demon wtf my life has been a lie
yeah negative emotions for are also really hard but instead of think everything is “sad” but i always thought it was more aggressive and more “ill-intended” as if the 😈 was more visibly upset and knew that it could use its anger to physically, emotionally, or mentally hurt someone kinda like this emoji 👿
Yeah pretty much, I just kinda copy how other people use them then it starts to kind of make sense
@@comrade_cat303 I think it means deviousness/mischievous cuz it has devil horns. It's often used in a playful kind of way, but it kind of depends on the context. Kinky people use it when flirting a lot.
3:37 - I’m sorry, 🤨 means “confused”?! I always interpreted it as either the “are you sure about that?” or the “I think you’re lying to me” kind of expression. Confusion would be this: 🤷🏻♂️
Exactly. I experience it as getting scrutinized
ive seen both uses
🤷🏻♂️ is more like whatever. Based on shrugging your shoulders. From japanese ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I interpreted it as the wtf emoji
@@kattkatt744 100%
That segue was too smooth
While it was, is it legal?
sometimes in groups an emoji gets a certain meaning. like with my friends 🗿 means something that i can’t even put into words and obviously we don’t have a sound for it but it changes meanings of sentences when used
"Sometimes used for various idiosyncratic purposes, such as conveying a stoic, deadpan, or silly expression." Maybe this is what you're looking for?
🐟🚼🧍🦙🦦🥀👾 these emojis speak to me on a spiritual level I swear
The part about how emojis can be interpreted differently to different people really spoke to me. My friends use emojis a lot more than I do, and I always hate when they send ones like these 😊😁☺️ because to me they come off as extremely condescending
2:07 You got me so good, I had no Idea where you were going with that until it was too late.
I always assumed face emojis represent interlocutor's facial expression, that would make them true pictograms. Sure you then jump to "this person is happy" or "this person is about to vomit" but that's exactly what we do when seeing facial expressions irl
But they don’t, 😂 conveys humor but doesn’t mean you are actually crying laughing; 😎 conveys “coolness” but doesn’t mean you are actually wearing sunglasses; 🤮 conveys disgust but doesn’t mean you are actually vomiting, etc. They’re sort of hyperbolic pictograms, they represent an archetypal and exaggerated form of the emotion you are trying to convey. And that’s without going into the ones that don’t even pretend to be a real facial expression, like 🤐, 😍, or 🤯.
I also think it's funny how the meaning of emojis change sometimes when you add them together, for example 👁👄👁💅🏼 or 👉🏼👌🏼, it does feel like a language somehow
🌚
🤨 📸 too
I did not see that emoji with the one raised eyebrow as "confused"... unless Spock was continually confused.
You could show the representation of confusion on your face to communicate that the silly mf has 12 minutes to explain himself before you fast travel him into underworld
Yeah, confused is 😵, which confusingly is X_X on Apple devices, making more confusion. But since Apple decides what the emojis will look like¹, it's now officially X_X, and there will be a new emoji for @_@ instead.
¹ I know it's actually Unicode deciding what they should be like, but when Apple makes a decision like with X_X, 8-ball, water pistol, that becomes the standard even if everyone else already agree on other things.
@@Liggliluff is 😵 confused? Maybe it depends on context, but I usually read it as dumbfounded.
1:50 - sickest sponsored ad transition I've ever seen
That sponsor ad was brilliant
2:07 I despise VPNs (or rather I despise the marketing buzzwords used to promote them), but I have to admit: this is probably the most clever segue used to introduce the sponsor of a video I ever heard
Emojis can also have a phonetic element. I dunno if people still do it, but a few years ago emoji say-what-you-see messages were a thing.
It's also worth talking about how much more complicated emoji meanings can be. I mean, sending someone a vegetable emoji can be sexual harassment through the power of context. I read an article a couple years ago about how emojis can cause serious legal headaches because of the difficulty of interpreting them and then explaining that interpretation to a judge or a jury without sounding like a nutjob.
"Say what you see" only works in a specific common language, though.
Emojis seem like co-speech gesture to me - they aid in communication, and their usage varies cross-culturally (with variation in what each emoji means in both granular and broad terms), which sounds a lot like written co-speech gesture. Co-text gesture? Idk lmao
That transition into atlas VPN was PICTURE PERFECT
As an autistic lady, I'm SO GLAD that there is research showing that it's not just me having no idea what emojis are supposed to represent. I have/do learn(t) them mostly by how they're used, but I also don't use them much because I don't want to use them wrongly. However I do love to send completely nonsensical bitmojis to my mother because I think that's chef's kiss emoji.
Edit: I have also been on the internet for A Long Time and I have gone through emoticons so I have spent time adapting to this way of expressing yourself, even if I don't really partake in it much anymore (though I used to...rawr xD...)
something really interesting to me is how discord (maybe other apps too) allows users to create CUSTOM emoji by uploading images… theyre server-specific and in my own close knit group of discord friends, we have a ton of custom emojis that mean EXTREMELY specific things that cant be put into words… they become more and more ideographic with use… also worth noting is how some emojis feel totally different across platforms (compare 😐between apple/samsung emoji sets, or 🤢between apple/twitter sets)… i personally have autism along with most of said friends and i feel like emojis (especially custom ones) actually help me to express myself way more easily jajaja
The weirdest emoji misunderstanding I've ever faced is with this one: 😪
I've always understood it and used it as a way to add a sarcastic/annoyed/resigned tone to a message, as in: "are you serious now? 😪", but not in an aggressive way.
But I was surprised to learn that everyone interprets it as "being sleepy", when this: 🥱 and this: 😴 already exist
huh i've never seen it used much but i'd interpret it as like exaggerated/pretend sadness, like wiping away a fake tear
Ah... i think knowing it came from japanese i cannot see it as anything other than a sleeping face. Watch loads of anime and only a sleeping character has that bubble from their nose growing and shrinking as they snore.....
So... my brain cannot interpret it any other way 😅 im gonna guess that 😴 may have been added for westerners?
Something similar happens with 🙆🏼♀️ some ppl in australia told me "it's a stretching emoji, hands stretched above head" and i burst out laughing coz this is literally just the way to say "correct" or maybe "okay" ( depending on context) in japan... so ... ppl don't realize what the emoji means and make up their own meanings.. problem now is, we have some ppls ideas and the actual meaning is forgotten/not even known O.o
i think 🥱 is tired or bored and 😴 is about sleeping while 😪 is dozing off?
If someone wrote “are you serious 😪”
I would interpret that as:
“im done with your bullshit”
@@dj_koen1265 Yes, exactly! That's exactly how I would think of it
this reminds me of because internet by gretchen mccolloch
she argues that emojis are "emblems," in the same vein as shrugging to show uncertainty or moving your hands to show you're still talking-they add important information but you need context to understand them...she explains it much better and goes into more detail but i didnt see anyone mention that yet so thought i would lol
I like how you saved the bit about semantic drift until the end. That's one thing about emoji that fascinate me.
I'm Autistic but also hyper-empathic - and I'm also fluent in British Sign Language. The raised eyebrow emoji I've seen used and also used myself to denote ''really?!' in response to something that could be read as nearly inappropriate or risqué - sometimes deliberately said so to be comical, but not exclusively. For 'confused' I'd often just use a string of '????'. Thoughts?
I do something similar as someone else with autism. Although I use the raised eyebrow emoji more as an "are you sure about that?" rather than a response to to something risqué.
@@phineas7423 Yes! Very much that :)
"????" is an interesting one. For me it conveys misunderstanding and confusion but in a rude way. It reads like I am very much at fault for this confusion, you don't enjoy it and want me to know about that.
I was confused when they said this raised-eyebrow emoji is supposed to mean “confused”. But that might also vary culturally. When I am confused, I frown or don’t change my face at all (which might have to do with me being on the autistic spectrum as well). To me personally, “expressing suspicion” fits this emoji much better. But also what you describe.
I do agree that 🤔 for me does not read as confusion, but rather to proclaim scepticsism. ???? Does seem somewhat aggressive. I would much rather use (?), or try to avoid emoji and similar characters completely. I rarely use emoji at all, and try to avoid tonal ambiguity through rather formal writing
That segway to the sponsor was so clean! 10/10
As an autistic person, I've understood emojis but I've always found them cringe. I've always preferred to use emoticons instead.
Though, now I use emojis slightly more leniently to spice up communication and show humour better, especially since I have slowly developed a sense of humour and understanding of satire over time.
emoticons > emojis
This comment perfectly describes me.
@@kklein kaomoji > emoticons > emoji ＼(。≧▽≦。)／
That was the best segue into an Ad segment I've ever seen in my life
That ad transition was so smooth I didn't even skip it 😂
When the ad isn't just a clever segue, but actually relevant to the video
that transition to the sponsor segment was so smooth lmao
the atles vpn had the best segway to an comercial I have ever seen in my entire life. you nailed it
That was perhaps the smoothest segue into an ad that I have ever seen
The way you lead the video to the advertisement is just seamlessly perfect LOL
4:08 the perfekt Swedish gave me a jump scare,
That's the first time in a while I didn't see an ad roll coming. Well done
The Unicode Consortium, the people behind emojis (and everything else text relating to computers) actually add more emojis when companies have different implementations of emojis to reduce ambiguity. I would recommend reading their interpretation of them!
Raising an eyebrow is a sign of confusion. So I'd argue it's still a pictogram. Even if you don't think about the face position when used.
yes ofc the raising of the eyebrow is still a sign of confusion, I'm just saying that cognitively that's not what's going on in people's heads. think about something like Chinese characters, many of which evolved from pictograms - somewhere along the line they must have lost their pictographic nature and turned into logographs, right? Where does that line go? That's really the question I'm asking.
I don't think you're wrong btw, it's literally a philosophical question with no answer more than anything else
@@kklein I'd say it loses its meaning when you couldn't reasonably expect most people to tell what the symbol is supposed to look like (assuming they don't speak the language but have the necessary cultural baggage to understand what a symbol is if they saw it in real life). Of course that's a fuzzy line, but I'd expect most people (who come from a place where that's a face of confusion) to look at the confused face and recognize the look of confusion while I wouldn't expect people to look at a Chinese character and recognize much of anything.
That does mean that some emojis wouldn't be pictogram for me, those that most people would interpret differently than their intended meaning (I would call that bad design).
I add the cultural baggage claim because a sheep in Burkina looks nothing like a sheep in the UK. So even a photo wouldn't work as a pictogram. Pictograms don't necessarily work across cultural barriers.
@@mnm1273 Would you say that 💾 is a pictogram or an ideogram? I think there is a generational and cultural divide here.
@@mnm1273 but then what is "reasonably expect" 👀, you might understand an emoji that I don't, someone else might understand an emoji you dont - for it to be good design does everyone who looks at it have to understand it? half the people? do we exclude neurodivergent people from this account (that is, after all, what I was talking about in the video)?
@@kklein It's vague because the line is inherently arbitrary when you have a continuous progression. I couldn't put a number on it now. Basically no symbol is truly universal and so being universal can't be the standard. I suppose there's a transition from "good pictogram" to "bad pictogram" to "None pictogram that kind of looks like the original symbol" to "none pictogram".
If I were given money distinguish the limits I'd ask people if they recognized the pictogram and see the success rate then after explaining the symbol ask them to categorise it (one of the four categories) and place the limits of success rates using those data sets. Still it would be fuzzy.
"Neurodivergent" seems like to wide a word to give a yes no answer. If your neurodivergence means you don't understand the concept of the emotions then no I wouldn't take the opinion into account (like if you have no clue what a sheep is I wouldn't ask your opinion on the quality of my sheep emoji). And if you can recognize emotions on faces then of course it's relevant. In between it gets fuzzy.
I agree obviously the lines are arbitrary but that doesn't to me the categories can't be distinct they just have debatable edges, like many human categorisations (even physics has error bars).
that ad placement was so well done i had to click the link
I usually read and use emojis as “this is what my face looks like right now (exaggerated)”. So they’re regular pictograms for me. Interpreting emotion from them is just the same as interpreting emotion from a person’s face in person.
I get really confused when people send me more than one emoji. 🤨😛😖 nobody’s face can do all three of those at the same time
See, i would read those as happening one after another, not at the same time 😅
Kinda like talking to someone and they go "huh? *laugh* bleh" .. im guessing a gross joke or something triggered that 😅but yeh one after another not all at the same time
I feel like the reason one of the main reason is due to how you would define emojis especially the ones that show facial expressions. I would argue that they do, in fact, directly lead to the concepts that they are supposed to represent and not indirectly they do it as at least I see it, they are a shortened little thumbnail image shorthand for showing a picture of the person whom you were talking to face with the emotion that they are feeling in the text at least as I see it is simplified facial expressions. Permit are intended to directly convey emotion aside from the ones use non-literally such as the skull emoji, Dave seem to be very direct
It's too funny realizing you couldn't read the ad with a straight face, just from hearing your voice there
got me at the "psychopathy" (about 1:20)
I made an interesting exercise a while ago: when I worked at the zoo I had trouble remember all the tasks I had to do at first, so I made cheatsheets that summed all those tasks up entirely written with emojis. all my coworkers both admired and despised me for this
When people write text with emoji, especially English speakers, they tend to use English homophones to write.
Like using 👁️👍2️⃣💃 to mean "I like to dance" because it sounds the same as "eye like two dance". But reading it in a different language will be confusing ... maybe it can also mean "correct, I can see two dancers" or "a dancer with 2 good eyes".
how would you write it in a more language-agnostic way? I've seen arrows used to mark 1st person vs 2nd/3rd person, but which is which is usually completely random. I think the 2 emoji could also be removed entirely, forcing the dancing emoji to carry the full verb phrase(it could be "i like dancing" or "i like to dance" both ways, though, so continuous vs simple distinction disappeared, assuming thats important)
@@epsi could also take a hint from existing logographic systems and express confirmation and denial through repetition of the verb(in case, for example, your symbols are already being used in a different way):
A: "💃❓" ("Dance?" -> "Do you want to dance?")
B: "💃" or "💃🚫" ("Dance." -> "I do" or "No dance." -> "I dont")
One of the differences between actual body language and emoticons (we called them emoters way back when, and emojis follow the same rules) is that they're intentionally added in where body language is often unconscious and compulsory.
I typed that, and only _after_ I recognized I was doing it. Since I choose what to express, it still makes the online written word way different than in-person conversation.Too different to say one is analogous to the other, even if one was designed to be an analog for the other.
I'll be honest, I have never once looked at that emoji was "confused." It looks skeptical. It still looks skeptical, and not confused.
I hate emojis. I've never known how to use them, and people around me expect me to understand them.
For the most part is just an annoyance, but when you get to the pure emoji texts, I just can't follow.
And as I don't use them, people seem to think I'm always angry.
LITERALLY the best ad transition I've ever seen. bravo 👏🏻
Woah, that's the BEST transition to an ad I've ever seen!!!!
6:50 perhaps it could be called Emojian or Emotionese
🙋, 🫵🏙️❓ 👍↔️👎❓
Credit where credit is due, that was a clever ad read.
I find the use of emojis as words really interesting, because their meaning can evolve and change based on time, place, and context. They can even be used sarcastically.
"I'm good. 🙂" can either be reassuring or have the exact opposite meaning.
…that advertisement, just wow. I also love the fact we can hear your smile 😭
I find online comunication to be just as close as face to face comunication. My best friend is a girl Ive never seen with my own yes outside of a screen. Emojis are not a necessity you can also wrong in [hug] and it will be understood and leave almost as much emotional impact as actually doing it irl.
Tangentially related, but the ideogram process you described is also exactly how I learn idioms as an autistic person. Idioms like “you’re the apple of my eye” make no damn sense if I think about them for even a fraction of a second. But I also don’t have trouble with understanding them in context, because I just think of them as phrases that have a definition.
I’ve always only used emojis if there isn’t an emoticon for it, or to be ironic.
5:21 The chaddest king seriously _explained_ emoticons instead of just starting to use them waiting for others to do the same
Wait, that one's supposed to signify confusion?! I've always used it as 'skeptically questioning', in a "So you're saying..." way
6:57 that’s not like any Somali I’ve ever seen written! What is that?
it's called osmaanya script
Holy shit, that was the best transition to an ad I've ever seen
In the Vietnamese community, the regular smiling emoji 🙂 means "wtf you just said", while 😢 means "cursed" (tho it is often used as a Facebook reaction rather than typed out)
not to mention the countless layers of irony and context which are added sometimes locally, or within the younger generations
You say emojis can't be spoken but I've definitely heard people say "thinking emoji" while talking
I have no idea if you actually speak Swedish or not, but that pronounciation was spot on haha I wouldn't have been surprised if Swedish was your first language
Smoothest add transition I've seen in a while. I must give you that.
That's the smoothest fucking sponsor transition I have ever seen. I didi not see that coming at all!
To me emojis function not just as a stand-in for non verbal cues (when talking on the phone you can't see each other, yet there is no need for additional words to express body language) but also as a replacement for tonality and emphasis.
A good example might be how putting two ✨️ sparkle emojis around a word makes the word more important and it add a dreamy feeling to it. It's almost like saying something in a singsong way. Using just words to express this feeling and meaning is more difficult and takes longer to both write and read.
Þat is þe SMOOÞEST ad transition I've ever seen, props to you, mate
bring back þorn
Well THAT was a good sponsor segue, you can feel the pride in his voice
As an autistic person, when messaging my close friends, I tend to use emojis as punctuation. It just makes my messages feel more lively and less dry.
🤮 is actually giving Shrek a blowj-
okay, this gives me an idea: a book written sheerly in ideographs/emojis? could it work?
Make a video about the Bakleks Language which is a very interesting Native American people who sadly the Cherokee do not admit of doing a genocide on which they keep denying to this day.
damn son that ad was smooth
(2:15) Excuse me, is it legal for you to not be clear when the ad break starts, and for you to blend content and ads? I feel like you should be careful about that.
its legal.
It's perfectly legal in many jurisdictions.
Best ad transition ever 😂😂 could hear you muffling a laugh as well
Double meaning is baked into any language, pictograms or written word. These emojis have a fixed definition, but in the larger context of a sentence, they can convey a variety of thoughts to the reader
And then emojis have certain meanings within groups - me and my friends use “😔” as a kind of jokey sadness. There’s something about emojis in general that makes them very difficult to take seriously, so “How dare you 😡😤🤬😖😠” is definitely taken as a joke, like an over dramatic way / silly way of speaking.
The rendering differences you mention are the main reason I still primarily use emoticons rather than emojis. ^_^ looks more or less the same regardless of where you're seeing it, the main difference being that sometimes the carets are larger or smaller. So because of that it becomes personal interpretation rather than rebinding that provokes different understandings. I usually only use emojis for something when I don't know how to construct a emoticon for it.
Emoticon was pre emoji and meant emotive (or emote) icon. Emoji was when they turned into actual images and not text based. At least this was my impression.
As an autistic Individuum I can say that even communicating emotions is learned like another language. Basic emotions (sadness, happiness and esp. anger) took my entire school life to learn to express appropriately. Emojis really confuse me most of the time. And more so when boomers place an emoji after every sentence.
You should look into how emoji conversation works in a lawless hellscape like discord where people can set whatever picture they want to be an emoji :crong:
that ad segue was so got damn smooth
That was the best segue for an ad that I've ever seen
I think a great example of the deviation between face-emoji pictures and meaning is the 😂 face. It seems in the English texting lexicon, the 'tears in eyes' laughter is more readily interpreted as laughter compared to 😅😆 which both represent laughing but in a more conservative way. In practice we rarely use 😂 to mean it's literally tears, but what's more is it has a dual meaning of both genuine humour and passive-aggressiveness nearly akin to 🙃 depending on the context. I would say then that "😂" is a pictogram for "lol" in all its myriad nuances.
(Not the mention the Old People Facebook phenomena of poor-sighted older web users seeing the tears and not the smile, and misusing the emoji in a message like "My 14 year old kitty Luna died yesterday 😂" )
I agree, also sorry about your cat😂😂😂😂
@@peppapigfan4887 my cat is fine
3:36
I see this emoji more commonly used to represent suspicion.
5:09 the facebook one gotme
that Microsoft emoji terrifies me. the guy who made that needs to be sent into a maximum security prison and never come back
this was the best sponsor segue I've ever had the pleasure of watching.
I hate that ad transition man. WHY WAS IT SO GOOD
1:04
I couldn't agree less. Get that demon away from me, lol.
Don’t forget that some emojis have become jokes and can cause confusion when used unironically
5:56 my mind immediately went „so lock me up and sock me up and throw away the key“ 😭💀
I would say they are more context and tone indicators than anything else, providing context that would be there in in person speech