I am so glad you said this … feel less alone now.
On the Internet I am obliged, it seems, to be nicer to people than they have any right to expect, lest it appear that I am being unreasonable ... because it is (allegedly) difficult to interpret textual communication, since it lacks all the subtle cues of body language and intonation.
Is it FUCK!
That's a piss-poor excuse proffered by the charlatans who want to excuse their own ignorance, stupidity, laziness and (above all) rudeness by blaming you for their behaviour.
Literature, great or otherwise, doesn't come with emoticons ... When you watch a performance of A Comedy of Errors, or listen to an audiobook version of a novel, you don't get a laughter-track ... If you want to read a book and it has words in it that you don't understand, you can't complain to the author/publisher about the lack of spoonfeeding ... you get a dictionary and look them up!
I am beginning to wonder about the sanity of a world in which people feel the need for a lizard emoji ... or even an aubergine ¹, for that matter ².
Seriously ... by the time you’ve hunted and pecked your way through them all and found what you’re looking for, the pyramid has already crumbled and Humanity has long since invented writing in the meantime.
Idiocracy is coming true it seems ...
First of all it was all the dyslexics and illiterates writing in Chaucerian vernacular — where spelling a word the same way twice, never mind accurately, is optional ... and punctuation is a disagreement involving fists.
Now we’ve devolved to the pre-school point-and-drool level of ‘Kitty! Doggie!’
What a load of 💩!!!
<sigh>
—
¹ That’s ‘eggplant’ to the ignorami amongst you.
² Talk about ‘edge case’ — who the fuck ever thought to themself “You know what I need right now? An emoji for ‘aubergine’!?” ³.
³ Nobody, that’s who. Nobody ever needed an emoji for ‘aubergine’ and nobody ever will ⁴.
⁴ Yeah, yeah, international customers, blah, blah, blah ... but it doesn’t help because nobody actually knows what it’s supposed to be ⁵ ... and photos don’t help either, because nobody even knows what an aubergine is — no-one ... and I mean no-one ... in the civilised world has ever eaten one, let alone seen one ⁶.
⁵ What is that? Is it ... some sort of plum? Or maybe a deformed beetroot?
⁶ Here, in the First World, our food comes in microwaves, or is delivered in a box ready to eat — nobody knows what the ingredients look like ⁷.
⁷ We’re not savages.
