12 June 2017

Would you say that you think in emoji? No. You think in words, in English. At least consciously that is. Whenever you’re conscious, words show up in your brain and travel the neural pathways to the hands. The fingers are typing on the keyboard and a characters are appearing on the screen. The characters on the screen are each one of the small set we call alphabet.

Every thought we want to convey in writing, we have to pipe through this alphabet. Even if the thought was momentary, it might take multiple sentences to convey in text. The text unfolds and unfolds like a string of proteins, a ball of wool. It is a labyrinth, which we need to navigate every time we try to express that thought.

We need to not only get ourselves through the labyrinth, we need to drag with us our audience. When the labyrinth is large and complex, we might lose our audience due to fatigue. They are only willing to follow us up to a degree.

They will also abandon us if we lead them the wrong way. When we reach a dead end, a lot of our credibility evaporates, and our audience will give us the finger.

We will also fail on getting them across if go too close to a Minotaur. The monster will catch them and kill them, and they will never get to exit.

We only have one chance to get them across.

And we need emoji. Bear with me.

Whenever we can take a shortcut and break through a wall of the labyrinth, we increase our chance of getting our followers through. Because we can then find a faster and simpler path, and avoid dangerous Minotaurs which will lead our audience to a different conclusion.

Whenever we can convey an idea, an emotion, or a feeling in a more compact way, we arm ourselves with a sledgehammer that can bulldoze though the walls of the labyrinth. And whenever we use emoji right, we can get our ideas more compactly.

As we are piercing though the walls of the labyrinth’s of complexity and emotion, we develop a new, more direct way to traverse it. A new way of thinking. The way of thinking in emoji, is the way babies think. Natural and unburdened by artificial constructs.

As emoji are becoming more and more prominent everywhere our brains become more and more 🔥

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