If you use this emoji, Gen Z will call you old - CNN
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
New York (CNN Business)Bad news for people who frequently use the emoji: It is no longer cool.
In recent weeks, two internet-savvy generations have been clashing in videos and comments on TikTok over the hallmarks of millennial culture that are now deemed uncool by Gen Z. The list includes skinny jeans (Gen Z verdict: set them on fire), side parts (Gen Z verdict: middle part or bust) and perhaps most painful of all, the popular laughing crying emoji that some millennials, myself included, use hundreds of times a day, or more.
"What's wrong with the laughing emoji[?]," one user asked in a TikTok comment. Another responded: "it's so off." On a different video of a woman saying she's cut back on using it after learning kids don't, one teen commented: "As a 15 year old I say you should use that emoji bc [because] we sure aren't going to."
"I use everything but the laughing emoji," 21-year-old Walid Mohammed told CNN Business. "I stopped using it a while back because I saw older people using it, like my mom, my older siblings and just older people in general." Instagram is realizing it's not so easy to knock off TikTok
For many Gen Z-ers, the emoji has become a popular replacement for conveying laughter. It's the visual version of the slang phrase "I'm dead" or "I'm dying," which signifies something is very funny. Other acceptable alternatives: the emoji (officially called "Loudly Crying Face"), or just writing "lol" (laughing out loud) or "lmao" (laughing my, well, you probably know the rest).
Seventeen-year-old Xavier Martin called the emoji "bland" and said "not too many people" his age use it. Stacy Thiru, 21, prefers the real crying emoji because it shows a more extreme emotion and feels more dramatic. She said she couldn't even find the laughing crying emoji on her iPhone's keyboard.
A similar emoji, called "Rolling on the Floor Laughing" (), is also no longer in vogue. When asked about that emoji over a video call, Thiru visibly grimaced. "I don't like that one," she said. "My mom doesn't even use it." "Face with Tears of Joy," the official name for the laughing crying emoji, is currently the most-used emoji on Emojitracker, a website that shows real-time emoji use on Twitter. It topped Emojipedia's list of the most-used emojis on Twitter in 2020, while the "Loudly Crying Face" took the number two spot. And it's had staying power: In 2017, Apple said the laughing crying emoji was the most popular in the United States.
"Tears of Joy was a victim of its own success," said Gretchen McCulloch, an internet linguist and author of "Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language." "If you indicate digital laughter for years and years in the same way, it starts to feel insincere. ... The hyperbole gets worn out through continued use," she said. That's why Gen Zers may be looking to fresh and novel ways to signal they're laughing through different ways. Gen Zers -- born after 1996 -- grew up at a time when the internet was already ubiquitous and often in the palm of their hands.
Some millennials, by comparison, remember a time before constant internet immersion; many launched into the world of emojis and internet jargon not through texting or social networks, but through AOL Instant Messenger. (Millennials were born between 1981 and 1996, according to Pew Research Center). Anecdotally, older generations tend to use emojis literally while younger people get more creative, said Jeremy Burge, the chief emoji officer of Emojipedia, an emoji dictionary website. Emojipedia recently wrote a blog post that said: "It's common wisdom on TikTok that the laughing crying emoji is for boomers."
Gen Zers told CNN Business they like to assign their own meanings to emoji, which then spreads to others in their cohort, often through social media. For example, the emoji of a person wearing a cowboy hat () and the one of a person simply standing have both come to signify awkwardness.
Others will string together a bunch of positive emoji, like stars, rainbows and fairies, and then pair them with something negative. "Our generation is very sarcastic," Martin said. Sometimes teens and twenty-somethings use emoji -- like the laughing crying one -- ironically, such as by sending six or seven of them in a row to friends, to exaggerate it. But, overall, that emoji is a no-go. "For Gen Z, it's like the same thing as having an Android," said Mohammed.
I'm not a Boomer... they completely skipped over the Gen X crowd. They talk about Gen Z, Millennials, and Boomers, but there's an entire generation of people between Boomers and Millennials! Most "Boomers" I know don't even text.
Me... I prefer using Deadpool GIFs.
They always do. They always have. That's why we we're X.
I'm not bitter. I don't have issues. Really.
We're the original "latch key" kids. After-school care? Nah... we're good to stay home alone.
You're not kidding. I had a single parent who worked weekends. I was home alone all day - with firearms. I'm lucky to be alive.
OMG!!! You were home alone with FIREARMS? The horror!
Do I have to put the s/?
BUT did you ride your bike without a helmet , EVER? drink from a garden hose? or ride in the back of a pick up truck ? how about staying outside after the street lights came on?
Those are the lucky ones.
Heck, I used to ride my Harley without a helmet. It was fun. Although at one point, I crashed one of my Japanese bikes and the helmet for sure saved my life, so I’m not really anti-helmet.
Yeah, riding in the truck is the one I really miss. We even rode on the open tailgate. I feel bad for today’s kids that they miss out on stuff like that.
Not that I don’t understand the prohibition. Some friends of mine in high school were in the back of a pickup that rolled over going around a corner. Nobody died, but they had injuries, of course.
I still do when i feel the need for some twisted throttle therapy , nothing like it .
One would think after my accident with the drunk driver that pulled out in front of me 6 yrs ago and causing me to litterally lay the bike down and twist it so the bike took the brunt and i only made like a flat stone skipping across a pond on the pavement at the intersection , i would wear one now as well , but i dont .
01 harley sportser 1200 vs a late md GMC Yukon wasnt pretty , about 3700 bucks damage to the bike , none to the GMC, and i have a little hitch in my git along when it gets real cold. forget trying to run.
I'll be damned if I'm going to let a generation of kids who weren't even allowed to go out and play without Parental supervision tell me what's cool or not. I'm an X the last generation of Free Range Kids.
Depends on whose kids I guess... I have NEVER been a helicopter parent. But yes, I agree... I won't let them tell me what's "cool" or not.
Haha...Free range kids was correct. We were allowed to go out the door and go any where we wanted, or could get to by our own means.
I swear, our parents didn't know where we were half the time. Just be back in time for dinner.
That's what it was like when we were kids.
Grew up in a tiny town out on the prairie (pop. 700) where everybody knew everybody. My parents, siblings and I rarely knew where each other were. This was long before cell phones so we would leave notes on the kitchen table for each other and could go days without physical contact.
I must be really old...... I don't use the damn things.
LMAO!!
[;^P)
I catch myself using the old school emojis... : )
DOS anyone?
(To tip out my age.... My first computer programs were written on Hollerith cards! Programming Fortran 66 in high school using the IBM 029 card punch machine...... EeeeHaaaw!)
That's got me beat. I was doing Apple Basic, Machine Language, Logo and Pascal in high school. That was before DOS.
In high school? We were using typewriters and carbon paper. Actually, typing was an elective class, but we used pens and pencils for everything.
On one of my shore rotations I got to troubleshoot a first generation TTL computer. It had 8K memory, and was used to compute simulated weapons drops. You programed it in binary-octal, via front panel push buttons. The chips on the computer boards were all 7404 quad nan-gates, and 7400 quad inverters. The unit could do trigonometry but the circuits only had the ability to add. That's right up there with the Apollo navigation computer! The thing could do 25,000 calculations a second. EeeeeeHaaaaaaw!
I was using smoke signals, still do and they work great. Being Indian I can send them, understand them and interpret them.
This for instance says ''Fuck you strong letter to follow Generation Z''...
HA!
In the first one I see a frog.... the second one I see a pig.... the third one I see another frog......
My HS was behind on tech... I had typing (typewriters and carbon paper) in my Freshman year, 1993/1994. My sophomore year (94/95), we got to play Oregon Trail on "green screens" and "program" basic commands... we used floppy discs.
My autoshop was REALLY behind in tech. I did alignments with magnets and strings.
We started on typewriters. Our class was the first to move to Apple II c & Apple II e computers. We actually took our class in the neighboring town and then a couple of us taught one of the math teachers what he needed to teach the next class.
Wow! That's some crazy shit there. I know that many of the US weapons systems are still non-networked DOS based. I'm trying to remember if our machine language was hex or octal.
Ha ha! I sent smoke signals once that said, "I'm so high right now!" Hahahaha!
I went to MENSA Plus school we memorized everything and we were always a digit ahead.
Dated my high school typing instructor's daughter (she was perfect).
He assigned me a seriously broken typewriter as a result (he hated me).
Eventually tossed it out of a second floor window and it hit his car (good aim).
Not the first or last time I was expelled from a high school (was a fighter).
I'm much better now (mostly).
It was the 60s and being a long haired hippy, had a target on my back (wore it with pride).
Studied the martial arts and got beat up even more often by my sensei.
I miss everything about the 60s!
Was also accepted into Mensa and didn't much care for my fellow geniuses.
ok ill show my age , i see a big blue meanie from sgt pepper , a pig, another blue meanie , what looks like some ones junk hanging out and a hand reaching for it ......
We both got the pig..... and I can see the big blue meanie now that you mention it. (Of course I did have to go back and refresh my memory,,,! Damn it!)
When I was in high school we didn't have "tech", except when the AV guy brought a projector around to show a film. Of course, that was more than 25 years before you were in high school.
Have never used an emoji. I find them juvenile.
One of the subtle benefits of getting older is that you dont care any more about what is in or out. I never cared much about that stuff anyway but I really dont care now. Just as Gen Z wont care one day.
Then they'll finally be Cool. You can't be cool if you're worried about being cool and if you're trying to be cool you've already failed.
Listened to bands who nobody had ever heard of back in the day.
Hired the Police to play in a club in Lawrence Ks before anybody had ever heard of them.
Played my own 8th grade graduation dance.
Was with the first white band to play the Sun Splash festival in Jamaica. Smoked with Bob.
40 years later folk say that was cool.
Most of the musicians I used to play and smoke with are now dead. How cool is that?
I'm sure that there may be a statistic proving most boomers don't text but in my circle of friends, which includes a lot of boomers like myself, many of them text. I dont text a lot, but usually 10 or so a day.
I understand that there are Boomers that text, but I think it's far fewer than Gen X, Millennial, and DEFINITELY Gen Z.
Out of my mother in law, father in law, my mom, my stepdad, my dad, my stepmom, my former mother in law and her husband (Dave), only one of them texts regularly (my stepmom and she's the youngest out of the aforementioned; albeit not by much). My stepdad, Dave, and former mother in law are probably the next in line, but rare. The rest, not at all... well, I think I've received two text messages from my mother in the 15 years she's had a cell phone.
John,
Do you use emojis?
Hardly ever except sometimes on Newstalkers. How about you? I dont recall seeing you use them too much here.
Born in 54 and still don't text. If I have something to say; I call.
Once or twice a week in my case. And mostly only family.
I'm a boomer and I text all day long. I think it has to do if you have kids or not. I have twin 26 year olds, and they only text, so if I want to communicate with them, I have to text.
That being said, I have my own favorite emojis, but that was never one of them.
That's a good point Perrie. My kids are Gen Z... I text... a lot. I'm one of the last years of Gen X though (1979). My parents are Boomers (all born in the 50s).
Actually, there was a "micro-generation" called Xennial created that spanned a few years of Gen X and a few years of Millennial that pretty much explains that part quite well [as a general... not for all in that range].
I just recently learned I could add a thumbs up or another emotion on top of a text sent to me.
That's relatively new compared to emoji.
I don't know if it is just an apple thing or not. When I get a text, I can add onto their text, a little bubble next to it, that is either a thumbs up or a 'ha' and one or two other things.
I feel like an old man sometimes with everything that is out there.
I have had an iphone since the four and am still learning things.
I have an iPhone as well. My husband has an Android platform. I don't believe he can do that, but as an iPhone user, I can do that to his texts and he sees it.
My first cell phone had to be hard wired into my car. My second cell phone had to be carried over my shoulder in a bag. My third cell phone looked like a big grey brick.
The ones after that got smaller and smaller.
Now the screens get bigger and better.
Waiting for an implant device.
My first CELLULAR phone was in 1997 and it was a brick-sized Nokia and analog. That thing was awesome. My second cell phone was the same size and shape as the first, but it had an added bonus... two-way radio through Nextel. I LOVED that phone. I was forced out of that one, because of digital. I was no longer able to use it, because everything became digital.
My first was a Nokia. Then I got a Chocolate.
I want a cel phone that has a dial.
I've never used it but I think they'll think I'm old anyway.
I'm so old that sending a text meant writing a note on a paper airplane. 8^D
Smoke signals...
Stone Tablets
I raise you a sharp stick and a clay tablet...
We still were learning with just sticks, they taught us to rub two together.
:)
Yelling at the top of my lungs (grew up in a tiny town)
My kids [and their friends] know to come find me when they hear my ear-piercing whistle.
Well, I AM old, so what???I never used emojis when I was young because I actually enjoyed using words since they were received as meaningful and relevant. Who talks or writes meaningfully now? Too much garbage to respond to so emojis are a fine response!
....Back when I was doing cave paintings.....! Could those have been some of the first Emogis?
Yelling at the top of my lungs. Everybody could hear.
Only time i didnt like hearing someone yelling my name was when they used first , middle and last name .....then i took my time getting home , but not so much time i got into trouble for dawdling. of course the walk of shame was having all the neighbors watching me walk down the street home and saying WTF did he do now?