How Emojis Ruin Conversation
Language is best when it’s layered
Last year I got into a fight with a good friend because I refused to reply to his non-words. It didn’t matter if he’d send me a winky. Or a sad face. Or a heart-eyed smiley. I just wasn’t interested. He could double exclamation point my insights, double ha ha my jokes or thumbs up my proposed plans all day long. No reply. Eventually all this boiled up into actual words being exchanged over a telephone and carried on to drinks over oysters. By the end of it my friend stopped sending me emojis and we are closer friends in part because of it.
Think about the best in-person conversations you’ve ever had. Don’t you think of music?
In an ideal world none of us would be texting at all. In my anti-phone book I borrowed the maxim of another anti-phone book and advised that whenever possible we should text for logistical purposes only. Why? Because texting has a way of flattening out our friends and loved ones. Over text we’re not really there. Just our desire to cut to the chase. There is no flare of the nostrils, no equivocation in the voice. Just a faceless seeking that has more to do with our own interiority than with that of our interlocutor.
