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Lawyers Faced With Emojis and Emoticons Are All \_("/)_/ (wsj.com)
Zorro shares a WSJ report: Lawyers gathered at the Atlanta office of a big law firm were debating a head-scratching legal question. What does the emoji known as the "unamused face" actually mean? They couldn't even agree that the emoji in question -- it has raised eyebrows and a frown -- looked unamused. "Everybody said something different," recalls Morgan Clemons, 33 years old, a regulatory compliance lawyer at Aldridge Pite who organized the gathering last summer at Bryan Cave LLP, called "Emoji Law 101." Emojis -- tiny pictures of facial expressions or objects used in text messages, emails and on social media -- are no longer a laughing matter for the legal profession. (Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source.) Increasingly, they are bones of contention in lawsuits ranging from business disputes to harassment to defamation. In one Michigan defamation dispute, the meaning of an emoticon, an emoji-like image created with text characters from a standard keyboard, was up for debate.
A comment on an internet message board appeared to accuse a local official of corruption. The comment was followed by a ":P" emoticon. The judges on the Michigan Court of Appeals concluded in 2014 that the emoticon "is used to represent a face with its tongue sticking out to denote a joke or sarcasm." The court said the comment couldn't be taken seriously or viewed as defamatory. Puzzled lawyers are turning to seminars, informal meetings and academic papers to discern innuendo in seemingly innocuous pictures of martini glasses and prancing horses.
A comment on an internet message board appeared to accuse a local official of corruption. The comment was followed by a ":P" emoticon. The judges on the Michigan Court of Appeals concluded in 2014 that the emoticon "is used to represent a face with its tongue sticking out to denote a joke or sarcasm." The court said the comment couldn't be taken seriously or viewed as defamatory. Puzzled lawyers are turning to seminars, informal meetings and academic papers to discern innuendo in seemingly innocuous pictures of martini glasses and prancing horses.
An emoticon is understood, by definition, to convey emotion.
I get how certain emoticons might feel offensive to some people in certain circumstances, but how can what someone *FEELS* be defamatory?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
There are literally emoji libraries where on can search the meaning. There is literally a word attached to every standard emoji (which in turn is an agreed upon ASCII representation)
"What does the emoji known as the "unamused face" actually mean? They couldn't even agree that the emoji in question -- it has raised eyebrows and a frown -- looked unamused. "Everybody said something different"...
Lawyers are people whose profession is to ass-rape verbal and written language to the nth degree. They can pull 1,001 meanings out of their ass with nothing more than a pile of shit with a smiley face on it.
Lawsuit for mental distress you've caused them inbound in 3...2...
Who cares what words mean as long as it gets more billable hours for lawyers and paralegals.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
But emojis can create new billable hours.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
"good reputation" is a FEELING
I had hoped a good reputation is from something objective, like consistent behavior with consistent outcomes.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
The best part about all this is that each device can render its own version of these things. Some variations are enough to totally change the meaning, too. (Apple replacing "gun" with "squirtgun", Skype replacing "sarcasm" :P with something that looks more like "nyah nyah, I'm mocking you" type :P, etc.)
We have finally gone back to Hieroglyphics.
Who cares what words mean as long as it gets more billable hours for lawyers and paralegals.
Lawyers can kiss my big purple aubergine! [that's eggplant for the yanks]
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
And how many of us have named our penis Lord Aubergine?
I named my penis after my college roommate to piss him off. I succeeded.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
The judge felt that the the text, if interpreted seriously, was defamatory, however the emoji was indication that it was not to be interpreted seriously. It wasn't the emoji that was felt to be defamatory.
I'm only assuming, of course, that we're talking about the same case. The linked article listed several cases.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I was puzzling over the meaning of \_("/)_/ as shown in my Chrome browser.
A quick search with google finds me this: \_()_/ Which immediately, looks like someone throwing up their hands in an "I don't know" fashion.
Even the humble smiley :) carries a very different face when rendered on different devices. And thus has a different or no meaning sometimes.
It gets worse. The famous pile of poo emoji sometimes gets rendered as a horrible stinky shit with flies buzzing around it. Other times it's a happy smiley piece of shit. A very different meaning is conveyed depending how it is rendered. Perhaps quite a different one that the author meant.
The moral of the story is. Don't use emoji. Use proper language with proper words as found in proper dictionaries. Get your spelling right and be sure the words you are using have the meanings you intend.
Of course slashdot does not render my second example correctly. Which demonstrates my point well. :)
Back talking about your poop. It has been very famously been mistook for chocolate ice cream by numerous people. I, myself remember the first time I saw it wondering if it was poop or ice-cream (it was identical to the strawberry ice cream only brown)- I correctly assumed poop from the context.
The original emoji come from Japan, and some of them are really only used by the Japanese. I think there is one that looks like there is a bit of water coming off the forehead; I forget what it really means, but I recall that most people in the West get it wrong.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
A comment on an internet message board appeared to accuse a local official of corruption. The comment was followed by a ":P" emoticon. The judges on the Michigan Court of Appeals concluded in 2014 that the emoticon "is used to represent a face with its tongue sticking out to denote a joke or sarcasm." The court said the comment couldn't be taken seriously or viewed as defamatory.
Donald Trump paid me $5,000 to pee on him. :P :P :P
Hillary Clinton showed me her penis at a fund raiser.
Richard Gere bought a hamster off me for $300 so he could stick in his rectum.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
"Emoji" is both singular, and plural. Just like "sheep" or similar. It is a Japanese word; a language where all nouns are singular and plural. Can we keep the "S" out of it? I ask just this one thing, please.
Who yanks their aubergines?!
*_*
I see emojis as the beginnings of a new written language. Solving the same problem as written Chinese did. I see it will turn into a common world wide written language,
Now I'll know to end all my death threats with a :P
How do words work? It's a miracle!
I was against replacing text and speech with pictograms before, but now that I know that lawyers hate them, I love emojis!
written in the 26 letters of the English alphabet and an occasional punctuation mark, then you didn't really have that thought at all.
Call it the 1337 form of the Sapir-Worf hypothesis.
Lawyers should ignore emojis like they ignore body language in a recorded statement. It's the words and context of the statement that matter.
It seems that the lawyers did as you suggest - it was the judge that called out ":P" and ruled the comment was a joke or sarcasm.
My name is Inigo Montoya...
In my experience online, I find Americans don't get sarcasm that is self evident to British people and this has got me into trouble many times.