A Campaign for a Better Emoji Future

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A Campaign for a Better Emoji Future
A Campaign for a Better Emoji Future

Journalist Nimrod Kamer presents his five-part campaign for a better emoji future

The first emojis were developed in 1998 by Shigetaka Kurita, who was part of a team working on Japanese mobile internet service i-mode. Although originally only available in Japan, emoji character sets have since been incorporated into Unicode, allowing them to be used elsewhere. Subsequently, our daily conservations become more enjoyable with the addition of a smiley face, a cute animal or a fruit. 

However, journalist Nimrod Kamer believes there are unrealised potentials for the use of emojis, from postcodes and password to ordering food and making complaints to the police. Here, he presents his five-part campaign for a better emoji future...

Emojis all over the world are being discriminated against, as people haven't yet realised their potential, financial and emojinal. There is no such thing as an Emoji-Free economic recovery. While saying awesome or brilliant is no longer thrilling, humanity cannot express itself fully without a fresh mix of 🙏, 🙅 or 👿 (use your emojination)*. Annoyingly, there seem to be forces out there blocking our right to use emojis, everywhere, omnimojipresent. It's ridic. Futurists acknowledge that the internet will be exactly the same 10 years from now, with the exception that emojis will be allowed IRL.

If you got them by the emojis, their hearts and minds will follow. 👅👄👍💙

"Annoyingly, there seem to be forces out there blocking our right to use emojis, everywhere, omnimojipresent"

1. Passwords
I want my Gmail password to be 🍎🍩💩🙅1983⛎. Whats wrong with me? Nothing. Why is such a basic thing not yet permitted? True, one cannot type emojis on a Blackberry or a PC, but many are willing to take a pledge if not using these devices anymore. Let us encrypt in emojis. Snowden himself should be an emoji whistle. Same goes to forms, web-addresses and postcodes. The combinations are endless. Also let us have an emoji passport ID and an emoji birth record, showing emoji events that took place the day one was born.

2. Food
Ordering food with emojis should've been enabled ages ago. The food selection in the emoji keyboard is quite healthy: 🍎🍯🍮🍤🍖🍝🍼. One can go their entire life asking for a 🍥 in his local supermarket and offend almost nobody. 

3. Police 👮🔪🔌
If someone stole something from you, there's no reason you shouldn't file a complaint by tweeting what happened in emojis, as accurate as you can.



Next we could drop letters all together. Just paste a series of icons in a comment to an Instagram posted by the police. This will be the end of pdf files and all bureaucracy. The date and day of the week for registering a crime should also be portrayed in emojis, thus ridding of TBT (Throwback Thursdays) and FBF (Flashback Fridays).

4. Money 🏧
ATM keypads (1-9) are so limiting. I want to ask for money in emojis. More importantly I'd like to pay an electricity bill by typing 😻😻😻😻😻😻😻😻 (how many kilowatts) and not bother with currency at all (not even Bitcoins). This is how we could solve the cost of living crisis in this country. Economoji (hashtag) can also cut carbon emissions by measuring pollution simply with 💨. Some would say it's just dumbing down math, however, our language and quantification methods are already a political tool used to scaremonger and gerrymander. Emojis will unify people. And if the  💉 was removed from the keyboard, nobody would be able to buy drugs. 

5. Race
Making emojis accessible to all means the emoji keyboard must have more racial groups. Now all we've got is this man 👳 and this moon 🌚. And loads of yellow men. The emoji future needs less white families and less cable-cars: 👪👫👭💏💑🚡🚟🚠. There're too many of them on folder 1, page 4 (cable-cars are on folder 4, page 3). To be honest, there are aboriginal** feet (👣) but it is hardly enough. I want my reproductive rights delivered in emojis.

We are in the midst of a huge life and death kerfuffle that has started in this decade between abbreviations, shortcuts, and emojis. The most popular shortcut at the mo is WUBU2 (what've u been up 2), but saying it in emojis (❓🆙🚹) is just easier. It opens the door to more interpretations, whilst not requiring an urban dictionary to get each phrase. Forrealism 🐬.

* Those of you reading this on a non-emojinal device are in trouble.

** Aboriginal = natives, not Indigenous Australians.