For a while, I thought it was strange how native Koreans would use extraneous ~,^^, ㅋ, and emojis in messengers.<p>Having lived here for over a year now, I see myself using those once-foreign symbols as part of my messaging jargon.<p>I feel it softens communication with the other person. The effect is similar to that of a smile; you can say anything while smiling and it won't look so aggressive.<p>If you message without healthy utilization of these symbols, the negative effect is similar to that of ending texts with period marks. No matter the content, the tone will seem aggressive.
Aw, come on, mentioning Kakao Friends without Apeach? :) <a href="https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/hphotos-xaf1/t51.2885-15/e15/11287911_1397529980574256_1009294730_n.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/hphotos-xaf1/t51.2885-15/e...</a><p>My last trip to Seoul I even picked up an Apeach pillow and set of peach-butt coasters from the Kakao store. Love that dude.<p>These are stickers for sure. My Asian friends and family use them all the time, including as replies on their own. Even my parents and 70-80+ year old relatives do this with regularity. The extra context that these stickers add are very useful and I wish they were more popular among my non-Asian friends. Somehow little rows of emoji and Slack reactions are just not quite the same.
i hope stickers catch on here in america and dont just stay an east asian thing. i think they're a better form of expressing emotion than emoji. the "nice" thing about emojis is that they're standardized, but i don't think anyone realized how hackneyed and played out emojis would get. when i see tears-laughing-emoji these days, i roll my eyes, because i think of dumb instagram memes. in general, they're tiny icons that are kind of lacking in expressiveness to begin with. i've gotten really tired of them, and so have a lot of other people. you start to think they're dumb. stickers don't do that because they convey more complex emotional information.<p>i find with emojis that i always want new and more specific ones, and stickers cater to that perfectly. emojis are this wan, broad "happy" or "sad" emotional marker, which doesn't really convey all that much, while, as discussed in the article, stickers can convey really complex and pithy feelings related to the cultural environment people are living in. this makes them feel like a more honest and human method of communication through emotional pictograph, or whatever.
Re: stickers<p>In Europe WhatsApp is a lot more popular than Messenger, and so people use emojis a lot, instead of stickers. Anecdotally I believe the amount of emojis in a conversation in Europe is many times the amount of sticker use in a conversation in North America.
Kakao has some of the best stickers.<p>The best part is, most are animated. And really well.<p>You can see some of them here.. about a minute into the video.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVpM8lUlMH4" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVpM8lUlMH4</a><p>There are constantly new sets coming out, and they are very cheap too. Most of them $2.