{"id":614,"date":"2016-03-01T11:40:18","date_gmt":"2016-03-01T11:40:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=614"},"modified":"2016-03-01T11:40:18","modified_gmt":"2016-03-01T11:40:18","slug":"whatsapp-facebook-emoji-smiley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=614","title":{"rendered":"Killing Me Softly with a Smiley"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><span class=\"dropcap\">O<\/span>nce upon a time, we lived in a world where we didn\u2019t end messages or emails with an emoticon. #truestory\n\nThere were words, punctuations, and the occasional onomatopoeic \u201chahahas\u201d. Then came the smiley. A colon and a round bracket, with sometimes a hyphen in between to denote a nose. We used it to convey happiness, joy and love, even sadness, and then discovered that it has the magical power to change the tone of a conversation completely.\n\nThe smiley is a wily one. It is truly a tool of subversion. In fact, it is the text version of a stun gun: Bung it in anywhere, especially in the middle of a passive-aggressive email or a WhatsApp message, and watch the reader get all confused. An emoji, if deployed effectively, is the magic wand that has the power to circumvent, the Brahmastra that can prevaricate.\n\nA couple of days ago, I was doing my best \u201cbusy man\u201d impression, shuffling papers, hammering the calculator, doing just about enough to justify my meagre salary. Like any good, underpaid office-goer, my focus is nearly always more on gossip than actual work. In fact, my ears are genetically programmed to pick up on who\u2019s sleeping with whom, who the boss humiliated recently, and other such matters of importance. That day, I overheard the boss instructing a colleague to email a difficult client about contracts, clauses, and changes, and to end the email with a smiley.\n\nEnd an official email. To a client. With a smiley. Say what  \n\nYoung(er) readers may not know this, but there was a time when people didn\u2019t use smileys, or even exclamation marks. I remember writing \u201cu\u201d (instead of you), and getting my arse whooped by my former boss. Those were the days, when we were encouraged to be professional, read uptight, at least at the workplace.\n\nBut today, you cannot escape the smiley.\n<\/p><blockquote class=\"quote--center\">It may have ruined language, but the smiley today has become the digital equivalent of the mint on your pillow \u2013 served to make up for everything from subpar service to low-thread count sheets.<\/blockquote>\nThe indispensable colon-bracket combo has been used by the best of us, to soften many a hard blow. If you want a team member to work late, just throw in something like, \u201cHey, you might have to work late, gotta meet a deadline  .\u201d Remove the smiley and you got a dick of a boss who is essentially saying \u201ccancel your plans and bust your arse the whole night\u2026 \u2018cause I said so.\u201d Even the tone of dire a text like, \u201cIf I ever find you cheating on me, I will hunt you down and kill you\u201d changes wholly with the effortless addition of the smiley. In the event of a murder, even the cops and courts are likely to ignore the text because\u2026 you know\u2026 a smiley at the end of a sentence can make the world a better place.\n\nI recall diligently writing letters to my grandfather. (I thought he was rich and would remember me in his will. I was wrong on both accounts.) And I do remember that I once threw in the word \u201coops\u201d in one of my letters. His reply to my mail started with a question, \u201cWhat is an oops?\u201d\n\nIt may have ruined language, but the smiley today has become the digital equivalent of the mint on your pillow \u2013 served to make up for everything from subpar service to low-thread count sheets. From friends we adore to colleagues we can\u2019t stand, from seriously stingy clients to someone you\u2019re seriously crushing on \u2013 there\u2019s a whole gamut of unpleasant chatter that can be toned down with that decidedly useful smiley.\n\nIt comes as no surprise then that the powers that be figured \u2013 hell if a bracket and colon can wrought such wonders, may be there is a need for a whole line of little sign-offs that can help you punctuate a conversation with feelings. During this experiment with punctuations, they ushered in the Age of the Emoji with an army of tiny yellow faces to convey to the world what you\u2019re saying with nuanced precision and add-on emotions.\n\nSo now you have a perfectly literate workforce, using the emoji right back at their passive-aggressive, smiley-obsessed bosses. If you\u2019re running late, try this: Hey boss, daughter fell sick, taking her to the doc \u2639\n\nNow, what can the hapless boss do in the face of your sorrowful emoji? Nothing, except, perhaps respond with, \u201cHey, no problem. Take your time  . But all the while he\u2019s thinking,\u00a0 \u201cBeta, tu aa toh sahi , teri g**d maar ke na rakh du. \u201d\n\nWelcome to a\u00a0world where you never say what you mean and never mean what you say \u2013 courtesy the humble smiley.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The smiley is a wily one. It is truly a tool of subversion. If deployed effectively, it is the magic wand that has the power to circumvent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":615,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pop-culture"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Killing Me Softly with a Smiley<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The smiley is a wily one. It is truly a tool of subversion. 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