Published Book by Thomas Benz

June 8, 2018

Attack of the Emojies

 

Maybe this has been much talked about but I haven’t noticed any alarm bells ringing about the way the written word seems under subtle assault by all manner of visual imagery, and the imperative to compress our communications. Obviously, language is the most vital component of culture and human contact and troubling changes have sprung up in recent years. I don’t think it verges on paranoia to be somewhat suspicious of the extent to which words are increasingly being replaced or truncated, particularly by modern social media. Perhaps I will sound like a Luddite but I believe that the increasing use of emojies, visual icons no matter how cute or clever, is tantamount to supplanting the rich possibilities of written language with crude and simplistic substitutes that require neither genuine thought or accuracy. It is as if we wished to return to the days of painting on cave walls as a means of getting a point across or preserving a vital legacy.

In a similar vein, the severe compression of twitter and texting, and the swap of pictures and videos for more natural forms of expression has the potential to erode the force of language itself. Never has there been a time when it was more important to know the truth about what surrounds us. And yet concurrent with this, the means with which to deceive, based largely on the allure of speed and convenience, continue to multiply and gain acceptance. The reason is that it is a great deal easier to hide a lie, to generate propaganda, to advance a false argument that just about bypasses the mind altogether, through memes that amount to slogans, and images that can be photoshopped to any desired effect. By contrast, the use of longer form writing usually offers many more clues about the substance of a given point of view, and provides safeguards against manipulation.

I imagine someone reading this and saying, why must it be cast as a choice? For over a hundred years, we have had photographs and movies and there’s no question the artful use of both is a great boon to the world. The problem arises when the great rush of everything causes us to get ever lazier about how we absorb information, since reading more than a bunch of abbreviations is inherently slower and more nuanced, and more an engagement of real thought than any other means of interaction can ever be. So, while we all need a certain amount of convenience and passive entertainment, let’s be aware of the steady encroachment of oversimplified messages, which more easily lead us astray and threaten our discourse.