The Deeper Meaning of Emoticon Exchanges

Maggie Farelly
Mar 28
3 min read

“Digital sonnets and syntax sentiments” Oh yes, dearest reader, the digital courtship in which a modern-day sonnet is composed in the flickering glow and flare of a screen. No need for whale lard candles to burn as the ink bleeds and the quill frays. What are the textual offerings for courtship in the present? The written word is no longer needed to profess love. Wordle word nerds, this is a siren call to those who find solace in the etymological abscess. It is a battlefield, my dear, proving to be harder and harder to decode and dissect these textual offerings. I shall decode some of what truly lurks beneath the veneer of this linguistic camaraderie. Oh, it is a battlefield — ground zero for the intellectually insecure — but don’t worry, I will be your guide to the other side of the emoticon hieroglyphs.

“Intellectually stimulating coffee date” They want an intellectually stimulating coffee date. That is a mere pretense, a thinly veiled arena for semantical jousting. The coffee is merely a lubricant in the form of perfectly heated java beans served and plated to be sold for $30.99 without tax because the origins of said beans are digested and then secreted to make the fanciest hipster brew in town. Then you can be asked about the symbolisms of everyday life, which is just a euphemism for the ceaseless dissection of your very being. The casual utterance becomes subject to merciless scrutiny. They claim their heart beats in tune with iambic pentameter. A declaration of romantic intent and courtship? Nay, it is a threat. Prepare for the impromptu recitations and for your every sentiment to be measured against the rhythmical tyranny of poetic meter by those deemed the “greats.” They claim their soul yearns for perfect cadence, which loosely translates to your conversational style being found wanting, and your linguistic rhythm deemed amateur.

“Spirit animal: Purdue Owl” A self-proclamation of grammatical correctness, a harbinger of the written. Just so they can deconstruct film tropes and musicals to exercise their intellectual superiority and assert dominance through the dissection of popular culture. The art of passively, aggressively annotating every document they receive, down to the findings on absurdly long CVS receipts. The deeply ingrained need and compulsion to impose meaning upon the mundane cesuras found in the white spaces. The 35-page artistic yet critical piece on the foundations of every inanimate object in their junk drawer: some desperate attempt to imbue the ordinary with some profound significance.

“Difference between affect and effect?” Pass this test and you will be deemed worthy of their intellectual and heartfelt affections. On Wednesdays only. The specificity is so chillingly precise for their schedule of eccentric rituals. Truly a testament to the meticulously organized neurosis of the mind. An obsession, a desperate search for chiasmus in crumbled-up napkins, meaning in the monotony of daily life. Finding metaphors in the fragmented nature of modern existence in Ikea furniture guides. One who knows the existential dread within the epigraph written on my eaten-up dollar in the Maxcy vending machine. An invitation to join in the abyss of their own meticulously created self-doom.

“Emoji analysis required” The final sense of engagement in this romantic world is a Word document with a bare minimum of 500 words. A task worthy of a doctoral dissertation? MLA citations? A demand for academic rigor, a power play cloaked in word play. A test of your endurance and a measure of your ability to conform to their intellectual standards without breaking the rules. A tough grader, a literary gauntlet, a test of your taste, your brain, your very soul. They promise to judge and critique you extensively. They promise a declaration of their intent to dissect, drain, categorize, and quantify your worth. In essence, the love and romance of emoticons is a declaration of intellectual warfare. A call to arms for those who dare to enter their labyrinth of linguistic pretension. Proceed with caution, for you are not finding love within pixelated exchanges, but you are sparring in a never-ending battle of wits. My feline familiar, Lord Cigglesworth, has been a silent witness to the endless stream of academia’s linguistics in emoticon form, a furry confidant in the loneliness of intellectual isolation.