Skip to main content

The Antisociality of Social Media Part 11: Just Give Us Picture Books Already

Social media has done it again. 

From the ambiguous and uninterpretable meaning of likes to the destruction of civilized language though an overpopulation of 3-4 letter acronyms, punctuation marks and emoticons, we have run the gamut of sorry excuses for words.

Or so I thought.

Allow me to introduce you, dear reader, to the Facebook Sticker. What is a sticker you might ask? It is a quick and dirty mechanism to scare the crap out of the BFF who is on the receiving end of your impersonal, remote, online dialogue, that's what. 

Let me illustrate by defining these new "you can't see me so I am going to try to tell you how I am feeling through creepy cartoonish faces" word stand-ins.

Enjoy. Or not.



 

First we have the standard emotion stickers. From left to right on the top row, you can express that you are happy, L[Y]AO, LOLing, or swooning, apparently. 

On the bottom row you will find the ideal choices to convey that you are ROFL[Y]AO, just realized it is starting to rain, didn't get that joke and are slightly hurt by it, or should not have used baby blue mascara on the day of your BFF's wedding.


 


Here we have options to say that you are not sure about this whole Pince-nez thing; fly, get off my face; you are a Stiller fan; and OMG, the fly just went into my mouth!

 On the second row are your choices to confess your astonishment over the loss of your nose, complete joy over getting your braces off (hits home with me), these glasses are better than the Pince-nez, and that is the last time you will trust the girl who is covering for your regular hair dresser when she is out sick.

 

Now the fun really begins as you express that there is some truth to the whole beer before liquor thing, you'd like to tell four people they are losers--or that you love Glee x 4, again, kiddish amusement over your missing nose and that's what you get for acting out that one seen in A Christmas Story.

You can also tell your correspondent that you are going to sue the surgeon over this whole tonsillectomy debacle, dammit, that fly just won't go away, you are confused by the phantom nose itching you are experiencing, and WTF happened to my pants!






We finish now by providing options to convey that you got duped again by that hair dresser stand-in, but it's not as bad as a blue crew cut; you still don't get that you shouldn't look at a solar eclipse, even with sun glasses; you never learned not to put a whole pack of Big League Chew in your mouth at one time; and no matter how old you get, you cannot resist trying on those goofy, swirly-line glasses found in every amusement park gift shop.

Below that are friendly reminders that you really shouldn't play with staples; go ahead and hold your breath you are not getting your way; no, hot sauce is not for every dish; and gosh darnit, where the F@#% is my nose?

So there you have it, dear reader, just about every message you could hope to communicate in one easy to use suite of creepiness.

What's that famous line from Wizard of Oz? What a word! What a word!

[Maybe I got that last one wrong ;-)]















Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Megan Rapinoe Deserves the Same Rights as Me

It didn’t take long to get me hooked on soccer. One play did it for me, as a matter of fact. The sequence is unforgettable—Rapinoe to Wambach to Goooaaaaalllll! That’s all it took. Now, sure, I’m a late bloomer when it comes to footballing. I still don’t understand the game fully. The whole idea of “tackling” is a puzzle to me. Isn’t that essentially tripping your opponent? If so, isn’t that just downright rude? I still don’t know how soccer players are able to overcome the fear of getting kicked in the face. And you know that whole foot-eye coordination thing? Yeah, I did not inherit that gene. But, I digress.
Read more

Overpopulaton of Punctuation Marks Threatens Message Extinction

[Because this bears repeating in such desperate times] Scientists report that a recent rise in the overuse of punctuation marks will ultimately lead to the demise of the common message. It is not known if the increasing trend of ending a sentence with multiple and in some cases, mixed, punctuation marks is the result of the natural evolution of messaging, or if human actions are speeding the process. What is clear, though, is that punctuation marks and messages are not taking their impending doom lying down. In a rare twist of bipartisanship, punctuation marks and messages came together to call for measures to halt the message crisis and return our civilization back to the days of making points in a clear, concise manner. Speaking for the punctuators, Exclamation point stated, "I'm a loner. You don't need two of me. The whole purpose of my existence is to accentuate a  point. I thought I was doing that just fine already." Mr. Question Mark had this to
Read more

The Antisociality of Social Media Part 10: Breaking Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad Habits!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

BREAKING: ENTERTAINMENT NEWS: Reality TV power house, Bravo announced today that it will be addressing Punctuation Mark Addiction in a new series, Breaking  Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad Habits!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The idea for the show was pitched by the Collective Union of Simple Messages, or CUOSM, after a campaign to fight message loss through punctuation mark abuse failed miserably. CUOSM teamed up with the informal organization the Punctuators to stall what appeared to be unsustainable punctuation overpopulation. The message had an anticlimactic effect, though, when social media users started sharing the memes originating from the campaign, while adding comments like "So True!!!!!" and "IKR?????!!"
Read more