We need to discuss the political significance of emoji. Not just any emoji, but the worst emoji of all. That obnoxious, chortling little yellow dickhead – bulbous, cartoonish tears streaming down its face – which seems to have taken over social media in recent months.
…Still, there’s something about this particular character – with its broad, cackling grin and the perfomatively prominent tears of mirth – that just feels inherently mocking and cruel… Even in cases where the emoji user’s meaning seems entirely innocent, it still provokes a visceral reaction in me that I’d struggle to overstate.
The Tears Of Joy Emoji Is Offensive Now.
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November 27, 2016Abi Wilkinson, who writes for the Guardian, has dedicated her latest column to the offense she takes at the Tears of Joy Emoji. If you’re not familiar with that one, it looks like this:
It’s one I use often on Instagram, in response to some of the hilarity that my friends post there. To me, it signifies laughing so hard that tears come, which is basically one of my most favorite things to do. But to Abi? It’s sooooooooo sinister, you guys.
She writes:
You’ve got issues, Abi. It’s a freaking happy face.
But Abi is triggered by it. She has seen it used, you see, in situations where it seems like people are gloating about what she considers to be terrible things. Like Trump’s statements about creating a registry of Muslims in the US, or him promising to deport illegal immigrants, or him saying he’ll defund Planned Parenthood.
OH THE HORROR.
She continues:
However, I’ve come to realise that the specific nature of the horror frequently isn’t the primary reason for the glee. It takes a certain level of callous disregard to respond to human suffering in such a manner, but the real target of derision is most often People Like Me. That is, socially liberal, middle-class do-gooders piously informing people that they should care about these various issues. In the words of Rage Against the Machine, the message being conveyed is clear: “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me.”
She’s got that right.
She goes on to say that people who use that emoji are mocking liberals, which I find positively hilarious. It totally makes me want to use that emoji to mock her, even though that’s never really been the reason I’ve used it before.
It all boils down to politics for Abi. She’s a Brit, so she says when she sees that emoji, she sees, “the detestable, carefree smirks of Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson as they merrily dance through the current chaos – hop, skip and jumping over the cracks in society they’ve helped drive deeper and wider, safe in the knowledge they’ll personally be just fine no matter what.” And she also says, in her infinite wisdom, that “Not everyone who finds the situation hilarious has that same level of insulation, though. Many of those currently chortling away could find their personal circumstances significantly deteriorate as a result of decisions taken by the politicians they support.”
Abi’s insistence that the Tears of Joy emoji is a political statement being used by anti-liberal people to mock liberal people is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because I don’t know about you, but I’m probably going to start using it to mock liberal people now, even though it never really occurred to me to do so before.
You?
