The worst part is that it's not even the best emoji (which we all know is the two-best-pals-in-black-leotards-dancing emoji). Although the makers of a dictionary deciding that the word of a year is something that isn't even a word is also a pretty horrific thing. What have we become?
Don't get us wrong, we're big fans of emojis. But we just can get our heads around why the people at the Oxford English Dictionary have picked an emoji as their word of 2015. Shouldn't they be the ones holding up the standards of English?
Anyway, we digress, the real reason you're reading this is because you want to know what said emoji is, and that emoji is *drumroll*...
Yes. The crying laughing emoji.
Officially called the 'face with tears of joy' emoji, the crying laughing emoji is versatile and can be used both for its intention, sarcastically, ironically as well as a variety of other ways. It can also be an effective ending to a thread like the favourite star was on Twitter.
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Casper Grathwohl, president of Oxford Dictionaries, explained the choice by saying, "You can see how traditional alphabet scripts have been struggling to meet the rapid-fire, visually focused demands of 21st century communication."
"It’s not surprising that a pictographic script like emoji has stepped in to fill those gaps - it’s flexible, immediate, and infuses tone beautifully. As a result emoji are becoming an increasingly rich form of communication, one that transcends linguistic borders."
The judges for the word of the year choose 'face with tears of joy' because ’emoji have come to embody a core aspect of living in a digital world that is visually driven, emotionally expressive, and obsessively immediate’.
OK, we began as horrified but after that explanation we can see their point. Are emojis the hieroglyphics of our day? Might the world communicate with images in the near future? What are your thoughts?
Via Metro
