Have emojis taken over your love life?

Have emojis taken over your love life? Are your fights about dry, unromantic text messages? Read on to find out if you’re committing one of the cardinal sins of texting 

    Do you think the creators of the SMS feel the same way Frankenstein did when he created his monster? After all, their innocent invention has turned into a living, breathing, grammar-wrecking being that is evolving so fast that no one can keep up with it! To add to it, the current generation seems to be just as clueless, thanks to words being replaced by shorter words, that were then replaced by smileys, that are now being replaced by the current rage that is emojis (see box).
    Unfortunately, nowhere has the impact of the SMS been greater than in the dating arena, with our textual selves spending more time with each other than our actual selves. 

 
INTERCHANGING EMOTICONS AND PUNCTUATIONS We all know that girl. The one who can tell the hundred different variations of the smiley face apart. When she’s happy, her sentences end in rainbows and hearts emojis. When she’s sad, they end in a cloudy sky, a weepy emoticon and a monkey-covering-its-face emoji. If you’re that girl, we’d advise you to tone it down. “It is so irritating,” says Karan Bhargav*, 25, a banker, whose ex-girlfriend used emoticons excessively, adding, “Apart from the hearts and 10 different smileys and calling me her teddy bear — by writing ‘my’ and then inserting a teddy bear emoji — she had an emoticon for every occasion. When she wanted to say she was out partying, she’d add a party hat and a whistle. It came across as immature — like she was trying too hard.”
    Research shows that women are twice as likely as men to use emoticons. And so, most girls remain supremely uncomfortable with the idea of a guy using too many smileys. Nina Sinha, 24, who works with an NGO, says, “This may sound sexist but I don’t think emoticons are very manly. I met this boy at my college fest and we started talking regularly. I tried to ignore the fact that he used a lot of smiley faces, but couldn’t. One or two smileys are okay but more than that and it conjures up an image of an over-eager Labrador. I stopped flirting soon.” 

GNG OVRBRD WID TEXTSPEAK The irony is, the receiver often spends a lot of time deciphering these texts. Says Joey Pathak, 26, who works in an advertising firm,“I don’t understand why anybody would turn a two-letter ‘my’ to a
three-letter ‘mah’.” “I had a girlfriend who used to shorten every word. It was more irritating for her than me, because after every message, I’d reply, ‘I’m sorry I didn’t understand what that meant,’ causing her to type it all over again,” says Prateek Kapoor*, 25, a mediaperson. 

IGNORING THE ‘SHORT’ IN ‘SHORT MESSAGE SERVICE’ We get that the word limit of texts suck. But four-text-long messages is one too many! Says Raunak Verma, 21, student, “When my girlfriend sends me a message the size of six texts, she’s not satisfied with my one-text answer. I tell her I’d rather pick up the phone and talk to her, which she says isn’t as romantic. Then we fight, because that’s so romantic.” 

TAKING THE ‘SHORT’ IN ‘SHORT MESSAGE SERVICE’ LITERALLY How does it feel when someone replies to your message with a “K”? “I had a boyfriend who replied to all my messages with ‘K’. Like forget a proper reply, I wasn’t even worth an ‘okay’. When I sent him an ‘I love you’, he’d reply, ‘same’. Same? What kind of a reply is that? He said it was because he didn’t like texting,” says Akanksha Bhatia, 25, who works with an NGO.
    *Some names have been changed. 

 
    WHAT ARE EMOJIS? Described as the more elaborate cousins of emoticons, emojis are way crazier and meant for people who feel that the paranthesis-based winky, tongue-out and other smiley-faced emoticons aren’t enough for them to express themselves. Though originally Japanese,emojis have now made way to several of our handsets and chats. Ranging from martini glasses to cats and penguins to heels (to everything else under the sun,actually) these cartoon-looking characters also made an important appearance in Katy Perry’s video, where lyrics were played out in the form of text messages.