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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)
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.
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
Which font are you looking at the emoji in? It makes a difference.
Emoji are ambiguous. This is largely intentional by the designers, and often by the users.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
"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.