“You know, sometimes you’ve typed a whole message and you realize at the end that you’re entirely lacking in emojification,” an Apple spokesman said. “So we provided the solution: When you tap on the emoji button, we’ll highlight all the emojifiable words there, and you can just tap, tap, tap, tap and emojify it.
As an example of how it will work, suppose you wrote this iPhone message to your bestie: “Let’s get together for pizza or a burger tonight.”
But then you realize, OMG, the message contains no emojis. No prob. With the new iPhone, all you have do is tap, tap, tap, tap and it no longer will be lacking in emojification, because the words “pizza” and “burger” will be replaced by little pictures of a slice of pizza and a burger.
Since you’ve already gone to the trouble of typing the words “pizza” and “burger,” I have a no idea why you want to do all that tapping. But maybe your bestie is a total airhead and needs to see the pictures because he or she can’t read big words such as “pizza” and “burger.” If that’s the case, maybe you should keep your old iPhone and get rid of your bestie.
Fortunately I haven’t suffered the pain of emojification, because I never use the little pictures, which I consider to be the electronic equivalent of those little hearts that some people draw over the letter “i.” But emojis, and emoji users, have been multiplying like gerbils. They’ve become so pervasive the Oxford Dictionary declared that the “Face With Tears of Joy” emoji was the “word” of the year in 2015. So when Apple’s spokesman made his announcement, The Times reported, it drew a collective “Ooh” from the audience.
After the audience had finished “Oohing,” the Apple spokesman concluded, “Children of tomorrow will have no understanding of the English language.” Which was his little joke.
Or not.
By the time we reach Apple 93s it may be that words no long will be necessary, because technology will have advanced so far we can express ourselves entirely with pictures on our smart phones.
Or on the walls of caves.
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