Emoji of the Year

If you heard recently that the people at the Oxford dictionary have named the word of the year to be an emoji of a yellow face that is crying while laughing and were expecting me to react in an indignant manner, you were absolutely right.

I understand that the word of the year is not meant to be entirely serious. It’s a marketing thing meant to drive sales and traffic, like People’s sexiest man of the year. I don’t ask for Oxford to crown a five-syllable word every year and I was fine that the recent Oxford words of the year were things like “selfie” and “unfriend” that people had started using in casual conversation.

But is it so much to ask that the word of the year be an actual word? Like, the kind with letters and everything? Letters that you can write and pronounce and even rearrange to form other words? This is just … this is not a word. An emoji is a type of communication but the dictionary deals with actual words and should stick to those. It’s like People naming a gif or a meme of an animated man as the sexiest man of the year.

It’s just bullshit, is what it is. It’s a cop-out, like when Time names the person of the year and it’s not a person but protestors in general or the year when there was a mirror on the cover and the person of the year was … YOU! (Barf.) This is not Kidz Bop choosing a word of the year; this is Oxford. These are like the word people. Pick an actual word that might say something about 2015. Educate us. Revel in the joy of actual language that we can pronounce. (I guess it could have been worse, since one of the runners up was “lumbersexual,” which would have immediately been embarrassing and dated.)

Yeah, yeah, you’re rolling your eyes at me and saying, “Simmer down, grandpa.” But I think I have a point that I’d like an appreciation of language that goes beyond picture books. Pick a fun word. Pick the word “emoji” instead of an actual emoji. Just make it a word.

I’m not foaming at the mouth about this. It’s just a minor annoyance. If anyone reacts to what I wrote with “Who cares? Get a life,” then point taken, but we can also can add it to the pile of all the other stupid shit people care about in your Facebook feed.