Even if you’ve never heard the word before, you know exactly what an emoji is. Those SMS text messages, emails, chat conversations, and social media messages that you see peppered with smiling faces, cute little gifs, foods, flags and other electronic picture icons are known as emojis. Truth be told, it’s hard to think of life without an emoji. A single digital image can convey a feeling, a reaction, or a thought more effectively than a page full of words. Emojis are used expressly in electronic communications. They may not be in the nomenclature used by our grandparents, but even they appreciate these delightful little images.
Thanks, Japan!
The origins of emojis are found in Japan. Towards the end of the 1990s, Japanese mobile phones started using these digital images to convey emotions. Emojis gained widespread popularity with the iPhone, and later with Android devices.
Operating systems now fully support emojis, and users are lost without them. Initially, these characters were encoded with Unicode Standard 6.0, and various upgrades have been implemented since then. The biggest impact of emojis has been the cultural influence of these digital images. Recently, a group of researchers at University of Michigan analysed over 420 million messages with a Kika Emoji Keyboard. The most popular face was the one with the Tears of Joy. Other popular emojis include Hearts, Unamused, Heart Eyes, Relaxed, Okay Hand, Heart, Kissing Heart, Blush, and Pensive.
The Emoji Movie is a Hit with Audiences
The much-anticipated Emoji Movie was released on July 28, 2017. With a budget of $50 million, its opening weekend saw it grossing $24,531,923. The eponymous movie features a smorgasbord of a delightfully cute, witty, and trendy emojis. It is a tribute to the ‘emoticons’ that we use so liberally on a daily basis. This movie goes deep – really deep, into the inner mechanics of our smartphones, tablets and phablets. It takes a humorous look at what goes on inside the software when smartphone users on iOS and Android devices conjure up their favourite emojis. Each emoji is capable of just a single emotion or expression.
Adorable Emojis Brought to Life
Of course, there is an exception in the movie – her name is Gene. She has no filters, and can display a wide range of emotions, much to the dismay of her fellow emojis. Gene is determined to crack the code, and enlist the support of Jailbreak and Hi-5. Together, this trio goes on a quest of epic proportions through the app-verse of the cyberworld. They are desperate to unearth the code that will allow Gene to have a stable emotion.
Their quest may soon imperil all who inhabit the virtual world in Emoji-dom. Together they must counter the advances of the humans, the coders, and the elements to stabilise the software. This movie is laced with incisive humour, incredible audio-visuals, as it adopts a tongue-in-cheek look at human culture in the modern age.
The Emoji movie was released by Sony/Columbia, and has a run time of 1 hour 26 minutes. With a hefty production budget of $50 million, distributors were always going to be eyeing their potential profits in a summer season packed with hot flicks. By mid-August, the Emoji movie had racked up $65,767,050 domestically, and $10,386,309 internationally. The actors include Jake T Austin, Jennifer Coolidge, Maya Rudolph, Patrick Stewart, TJ Miller and James Cordon.
It may not be the biggest 3D movie of the year, but it’s definitely one of the smallest and cutest. Many folks have taken to emojis like ducks to water. But truth be told, not all of us use them correctly. Here is a list of 12 emojis that are wrongly used by lots of people. Next time you reach for your smartphone, tablet, or phablet – remember that emojis are distinct emotional icons with specific meanings. You may want to brush up on your digital yellow faces before you let your fingers do the talking!