Emojis

Emojis

Leigha Dowell, reporter

In the beginning, there were emoticons. For the most part, these came of age as the πŸ™‚ and πŸ™ and 8-D of chatroom conversations in the 1990s. These primitive gestures represented an important part of early netspeak: You could convey sarcasm by tacking on πŸ˜‰ at the end of your message, or share your ambivalence with the Β―_(ツ)_/Β― face. When Shigetaka Kurita created the first emoji in 1999, he had to work within a grid measuring 12 by 12 pixels.