Emojis, fatigue, and our shift from ‘respond culture’ to ‘react culture’

For Chi Thukral, a textual message in response to her Instagram Story feels as special as a “handwritten letter” now. “Because no one does that anymore,” says the 27-year-old marketer-creator from Los Angeles.

On 14th February, Instagram introduced a heart icon on Stories which allows people to ‘like’ someone’s story instantly. Before this, too, you could react to a story by choosing from six different emojis, but the heart emoji visible at the bottom right of the screen reduces the number of steps required in this decision-making process. Instead of tapping on the ‘Send message’ slate and picking an emoji, you can just tap the heart icon instead. Due to this new feature, more people react to her Instagram Stories now than they ever did, says Chi.

     

Yet, she wishes people gave a detailed reaction sometimes. If nothing, it will help her understand the emotion her content evokes. “But these days, everyone just leaves a ‘heart’ and moves on.”

Emojis have always complemented our online conversations. They add a visual expression to the words we use to communicate our emotions – a simple ‘thumbs up’ emoji can infuse life into a staid “OK”. On messaging platforms like WhatsApp, the six skin tones available for emojis make room for conversation about race and identity. We define our relationships through the colour of the ‘heart’ emoji we use – red for loved ones, yellow for being friendly but not too close, white for peaceful, purple for solidarity and BTS fandom, and so on. The elderly seem to love their ‘prayer hands’ emoji, while the younger ones are forever educating us on the innuendos behind seemingly harmless-looking emoticons.

Over the last year though, their role has evolved considerably. Today, emojis are not just a means to communicate online, they are a means to stay connected. We’re increasingly using them as reactions, also called “reacjis”, to acknowledge people’s Instagram stories, their LinkedIn comments, their WhatsApp messages, and even their memes in our DMs.

“Reacjis” became popular in 2015 when Slack, a workplace chat platform, introduced hundreds of emoji reactions for professionals to acknowledge messages in creative ways. In its inimitable ‘being the first to copy something good’ style, Facebook did a global roll-out of emoji reactions shortly after. Two years ago, Twitter and Instagram introduced emoji reactions for DMs. In May, WhatsApp announced emoji reactions for messages and upgraded it from six to the whole emoji keyboard just two weeks ago. Right now, LinkedIn is promoting a “funny” emoji reaction to “express humour and fun” on the professional networking platform.

By launching reacjis, social media and messaging platforms are perhaps reacting to our changing needs as internet users, says Meghna Mukherjee, a psychoanalytical psychotherapist from Noida. “We’re constantly interacting with so many people at once through our phones these days. It exhausts us, wears us out. But we also fear losing connection, we’re uncomfortable with leaving things unacknowledged.”

In a way then, reacjis seem to be a manifestation of our cumulative restlessness. As Shaheena Attarwala, a product design manager at a big tech firm, says, “Not everything deserves a reaction. But we put this pressure on ourselves that if we don't react to other people’s updates, why would anyone bother about us?”

In an always-online world, leaving someone on ‘read’ is a cardinal sin, says Ishtaarth Dalmia, an anthropologist and marketing strategist at a fintech company. “Reaction emojis allow you to microdose on staying in touch with people,” he adds. They help us avoid “seen-zoning” others all while reducing the burden of replying with words.

Reacjis have considerably reduced 21-year-old Satviki’s verbal and textual communication, and she is not complaining. “We’re all fatigued and trying to get by. This way you don’t need to put thought into what to write but can convey that you care,” says the Chennai-based student who goes by the handle @satvicked on Twitter.

Satviki appreciates the Instagram Story-hearting feature because it eliminates the obligation of you having to respond to someone’s reaction to your story. Story reactions are sent to our DMs, whereas if you ‘heart’ someone’s story, it just comes in the notification tab.

Emoji reactions are empowering us to react despite the fatigue, says Meghna, the psychotherapist. “At the same time, they are taking away our power to respond,” she adds.

Sascha Kirpalani, an adolescent and adult psychotherapist, has experienced this first-hand. “You feel this pressure to respond to a message but don’t have the emotional bandwidth to frame a response at the time so you leave an emoji to at least acknowledge it. A few days later, you want to come back to it but it is too awkward to respond then.” Sascha believes our text-based communication on the internet will reduce just the way our attention spans have gone down in the last few years. “It also means you will become far more discerning of what you want to spend your time responding to versus what can do with a reaction alone,” she adds.

However, it would be interesting to know if people even remember the reactions they got to their stories and big moments in their lives, says Ishtaarth. A 'like' is seen as the “lowest-friction way” to interact on the internet; a reaction emoji has an even lower barrier to communicate, he adds. Words, while hard to put together at times, also have a deeper effect. Otherwise, ‘famous last words’ would have been replaced by ‘famous last emojis’ already!

     

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Shephali chronicles how the internet is changing the way we live, and how our changing ways force tech companies to transform themselves. You can write to her on Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin.

Edited by: Shalini Umachandran. Produced by: Nirmalya Datta

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