Jan 27, 2026- Andy is in OurLittleCorner today
A Thumbs Up for Emojis – or Not
My personal digital hell is a family-wide text exchange (which can include Ann, our two kids and our two grandkids ). During such sessions emoji-adorned comments appear on my screen with staccato-like speed while I’m fumbling around in the emoji bone pile looking for a face with a grimace (or whatever) for my own input. But by the time I find one I am three or four text exchanges behind and grimacing is no longer relevant. What I really need is a slow-witted grampa emoji that covers everything.
As much as I’m annoyed by these little figures with their cutesy faux emotions, I’m aware that survival in our emoji-obsessed cyber world requires at least a modicum of understanding of these ubiquitous icons. So I grudgingly set out to learn about them — and quickly realized that the emoji world is full of ambiguity and surprises.
Right off the bat I learned that emojis come from a universe I didn’t know existed. According to the MIT Tehnological Review , the emojis that reside in our email and message apps are “released, standardized, and approved (or rejected)” by a nonprofit group called the Unicode Consortium. Frankly, I find it kind of creepy to think that those emojis that embellish our emails and texts are issued by some shadowy, ominous-sounding organization.
To get a real taste of the emoji world head over to emojipedia.org. There you’ll find all 3,953 emojis sanctioned by the Unicode Consortium, be able to play emoji games, learn the backstories for the creation of many of the emojis, and get the results for the Annual World Emoji Awards (held every August).
Despite their omnipresence, it turns out that no one seems to know exactly what emojis really are. In a recent piece for The Atlantic, Megan Garber writes that from the outset linguists have debated about whether or not they constitute a language, a debate that intensified in 2015 when The Oxford English Dictionary named 😂 as its “Word of the Year.”
They are “language-like” without being language and “sort of like symbols but not really symbols” and can be used as punctuation. Among other things, Garber suggests that we can consider them to be “tactfully ambiguous conversation-enders.” I like that interpretation.
But what disturbed me the most from Garber’s article is that there is a gaping generational divide over the meaning of some of the most frequently used emojis. What we older folks may consider to be the meaning of an emoji may mean the opposite for younger generations. For example, here’s what Garber says about what the thumbs up emoji means to Gen Zers:
… the 👍 is dismissive, disrespectful, even “super rude.” It’s a digital mumble, a surly if you say so, a sure but screw you. It is passive aggression, conveyed with pictographic clarity yet wrapped in plausible deniability
To learn this was particularly troubling to me because our two grandkids are members of the Gen Z crowd and I can’t tell you how many messages we’ve exchanged filled with thumbs up emojis. Now I’m wondering if those 👍s I’ve been sending them could have been viewed to be more like 🖕s. Or worse yet, I now wonder about the meaning of those 👍s I got from our grand kids in response to my (many) terrible puns. I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know.
After thinking about all of this I’ve decided that it’s best to avoid reading too much into these little icons. From now on I’ll be taking them at face value which, when you think about it, is sort of a pun in itself, deserving of a 👍 or a 😂 — unless, of course, you’re a Gen Zer.
👍”a positive thumbs up”
Thanks for the 👍. I’d reply with the same but not sure if you’re a Gen Zer or not.
Correspondents who frequently use emojis become identified as not interested in continued correspondence.
Sounds like some kind of ancient proverb. I’ll add this to my notes on what to know about emojis.
This is TOO funny, Andy! I use the thumbs up emoji ALL the time and never realized that Gen Z-ers might be reading it differently. Thanks for the heads-up (hmmm, no emoji for THAT?).
It is a bit disconcerting for us thumbs-up users, but I guess the trick is to embrace the generation gap and avoid corresponding with Gen Zers. Let me know if you run across a heads up emoji – it could be useful.
I only use one, but my therapist said I’m making progress. 💩
Is it “progress” because your one emoji is number two?
This reminds me of the time that our youngest son texted back to Susan, “Never send that emoji to me again!” It apparently meant something entirely inappropriate for a Mother to send to her Son.
I also note that all of the above replies have used none, or only one, emoji in their comments. It tells me that they, like me, are way past the point of trying to learn another language, and prefer the time honored method of using words and punctuation to make sentences and paragraphs.
Just to show that I have used them before, my favorite sign-off is 😎
You’ve got me curious about what emoji prompted that response from your son.
Perhaps there were so few emojis in the replies because folks know that I’m basically not an emoji kind of guy.
You probably don’t want to know what Gen Zs think of the 😎 emoji.
Thanks for commenting. I always appreciate your input. 🦃 (I searched for a “thanks” emoji and the turkey came up so I am using it even though Thanksgiving is long over)