I am an avid emoji user. I will write a four word sentence and follow it up with an equal amount of laughing emojis (the douchey translation of laughing at your own joke in person.) So when my friend introduced me to the world of bitmojis, I was all for it. Bitmojis allow you to create an avatar that looks like you. You can dress it up with popular store/brand attire names (Forever 21, Steve Madden, etc) and choose the features that most closely match you. Once created, you are given an endless amount of “bitmojis” where some of the classic emojis are now upgraded to match your look. However, the most important difference between emojis and bitmojis is that the majority of bitmojis have words and phrases attached to them. A lot of these are composed of slang phrases, but there are also short common questions/comments like, “Let’s grab lunch?”, “What happened?”, “So proud of you”, etc. Personally I enjoy this, and am guilty of having had whole conversations with friends purely using bitmojis as the main form of writing. However, this got me thinking: Is this similar to the natural progression from hieroglyphs to an alphabetical writing system? For so long we liked that emojis could represent certain words and emotions via text, but bitmojis offer that, plus removes ability of misinterpreting what the emoji was supposed to communicate. But is that a good thing? Although I don’t plan on restraining from using them, there is a slight concern in the back of my mind that wonders if the lack of actual original writing on my end via text is a step backwards from regular emojis.
Great blog post ! I really enjoyed reading it.