Mental Floss Explains Where Emojis Came From

Whether it's an alert that your table is ready at a restaurant or a quick note from your mom to pick up some milk, texting has become one of the primary ways we as humans communicate. Rather than have a 3 minute conversation on the phone, we can now send a text that took us 30 seconds to compose. For some, even 30 seconds is just too much time. Therefore, emojis have also risen in prominence. Why spend 30 seconds on text when you can push one button and get an image that totally encapsulates your message, right?

nbt-emoji

Where did all of these emojis come from???

Whether it’s an alert that your table is ready at a restaurant or a quick note from your mom to pick up some milk, texting has become one of the primary ways we as humans communicate. Rather than have a 3 minute conversation on the phone, we can now send a text that took us 30 seconds to compose. For some, even 30 seconds is just too much time. Therefore, emojis have also risen in prominence. Why spend 30 seconds on text when you can push one button and get an image that totally encapsulates your message, right?

But where do these modern hieroglyphs come from?

In the video above, Mental Floss takes a look at the surprisingly storied history of the little pictures that we now use to give people a digital thumbs up or a smiling pile of poop.

While you’re here:

Click here to see the wild variation in emojis between providers/operating systems

Also, if you’d like to turn a photo into an emoji image (like our emoji logo above), click here

by | Apr 5, 2016 | Blog, Social Media News

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