Every once in a while I get a text, and it has no emoji in it. And even though the text is fine, and the contents are pretty neutral, the fact that there are no emoji puts my mind in an instantaneous state of doubt — is this person mad at me?

Perhaps you recognise this feeling I just described (or maybe it’s just me — if it is, let me know in the comments). Emoji are nowadays used by so many, and so often, that when they remain absent from digital communication, the emoji-less message may read as more negative than it might have read before emoji became such a messaging staple.

We’ve become pretty dependent on these tiny little depictions of all sorts of everyday emotions and things. Their presence or absence is perhaps interpreted in different ways depending, perhaps, on state of mind or personality (just like my interpretation may be fuelled by how sensitive I am to social rejection). But what about differential interpretation of the emoji themselves? Emoji are meant to make communication easier, more straightforward, in the absence of seeing someone’s face. But could it be that in some cases they actually introduce extra communicational noise?

Continue reading the rest of my blog on my http://nastasiagriffioen.com/2020/09/12/emoji-nice-or-noisy/.