These are the first words that I say to anybody who adds me on Snapchat.
Well, not exactly. You see, I've decided to do an experiment and troll a guy, and came back with strangely positive results. The more I repeated this experiment, I got more and more positive results. Emojispeak was born out of spite, but brought... good..?
Come to think of it, a lot of good things on this planet were born out of spite. The actual message is in emoji.
Because of how SS is structured, I cannot accurately display the message. I've actually tried, and SS's infrastructure... or something... is not receptive to emojis. I'm not a backend developer, I don't know how these things work. @Marquis could possibly explain, but unless he does this in baby-talk, it all will come into one ear and exit out of the second.
The initial idea was born out of spite, for the most part, but also a need: I don't speak Arabic, and Google Translate is... well, not bad, but not very good either. Another problem is that because of my location - Israel, A LOT of Arabs swarm me with hate messages.
"PALESTINE WILL PREVAIL! DEATH TO ISRAEL!!!! I KILL YOU AND YOUR MOTHER!!!"
My father, by the way, was never mentioned. I'd appreciate if an Arab could explain how murdering my mother would more insulting than murdering my father.
But I digress.
Certainly, blocking one is easy, but with one down, a thousand more come. I needed either a repellant or some way to make peace with them. The best way to deal with trolls, in my opinion, is to out-troll them. There are thousands of videos on youtube of people either calling scammers, or being called by scammers and fucking with them on the phone. I took it as an example.
The first guy was difficult at first - he spoke Arabic, which didn't deter me from fucking with him, but made it difficult to understand what he wants. As long as he was speaking in Arabic.
Normally I respond to this by busting out Google Translate (GT henceforth), typing out "sorry, I don't know arabic <sweat_smile>, however, in this situation I've responded with the following:
Some fucking around later, I've established some basics on emojis in general:
1) Emojis come left to right, so there is some very basic structure.
2) There's a metric fuckload of them.
3) Through trial and error I learned, a lot of combinations suggest gay sex.
That's it. Other than two question marks - one gray/white, one red, and two exclamation marks, once again red and white, there's nothing. No commas, no periods, no stops or pauses. of any kind. With this in mind, the flow of conversation changes to... whatever you want to be, really. I've soon deduced that it's better to use new lines as full stops and have yet to come up with the equivalent of a comma. I'm starting to believe commas are not necessary with this.
Some more Arabic and emojis later the guy is finally starting to respond in a way that I can understand - English. He is surprisingly not angry, at least not as angry as I've expected him to be. He sends me a sticker of himself (his bitmoji, rather) on the floor with a sign of an empty gas tank above, and some time later he sent me another meaning he's going to work.
Some time later he said three words: "we are waiting". Having responded with a red question mark, which I've decided to claim for generic use, as it is more visible, he responded with two more words: "Ramadan Mubarak".
Of course! It's Ramadan! The Muslim... uh... holiday..? of fasting. Being not very acquainted with Islam, I'm not entirely sure whether it's considered a full-on holiday or just tradition.
Some more time passes and I decide to poke at him again. Being at work in what is basically a bunker, I have only a vague sentiment of the sun's position. I come out for a smoke every so often, but even then, I rarely leave "the cave". At least not until it's time to go home. Having nothing better to do, I poke at him again with a wave. He sends me a picture of his apartment/room. It's empty. I respond with the strongest :o (there are three tiers) and attempt to question him about his bare bones living place. He responds with Arabic at first, but switches to English through a translator and explains how during Ramadan one is to live a minimalist lifestyle.
Two cigarettes later I sign that I'm going back to work, and a magical thing happens: he responds with a thumbs up!
All of this happened yesterday.
During today's lunch, I've emoji'd at him some more and... HE RESPONDED IN KIND!
We had a vague conversation about the end of his fasting yesterday. He sent me a picture of a MASSIVE goat and various forms of meat food - kebab, stew, curry and salad. Certainly, salad is not a meat dish, but you need a side dish to consume a gigantic goat. Seriously, it was wider than high. Somehow it was able to stand with its toothpick looking legs.
He finished his description of consuming the goat with a happy :P. There are four kinds: happy, generic, amused/laughing, and mocking.
I interpreted it as if he is very pleased with eating a gigantic goat. Considering he had to wait until the sun is entirely gone to consume it, I imagine it was delicious.
And so we continued, speaking strictly in emoji. His "I WILL KILL YOU AND YOUR MOTHER AND YOUR COUNTRY RAAAAARGHHH!!!" attitude disappeared entirely and we shared our experiences of yesterday, experiences of today, and expectations from tomorrow. All in emoji, of course.
Having done alpha testing on this guy, I've branched out to more people. I've been looking specifically for Saudis at first to both troll and make friends with them (because snapchat keeps sending me to Saudis and Saudis to me). Soon I've branched to Americans and the French by friending a lot of Americans and French people.
It's not that I'm particularly fond of these nationalities, it's just that this is what Snapchat thinks is appropriate to me. I really wish I knew how to branch out to... I don't know... rest of Europe... Snapchat keeps me stuck with very certain parts of the world.
Every single time I initiated a conversation with my standard greeting
After some mild confusion from the receiving party, save for one particular case so far, the response has been mostly positive. I went as far as changing my name to :) <blue guy shouting>: emojispeak.
Having established to some degree that I speak strictly in emoji, some people have already come to me with the knowledge that I speak strictly in emoji. I've been spammed with some Arab flags (I don't know what country. I think Palestine?), after attempting to actually speak with them in emoji and question their anger and despise of Israel, we've established that I am an individual human that is not at fault for what this country did, whatever it was. I specifically cannot be put to fault for what other people before me did, and I alone cannot bring the change they want to see. I alone am meaningless and powerless. I am human. I am a single human. I am a mere ant.
My current hypothesis is that since emoji is a language that relies on hieroglyphics and not actual words like I'm typing right now, words that are difficult to interpret in other ways, words that are "stationary", for a lack of a better word, this keeps their views held in place.
With all this said?
Well, not exactly. You see, I've decided to do an experiment and troll a guy, and came back with strangely positive results. The more I repeated this experiment, I got more and more positive results. Emojispeak was born out of spite, but brought... good..?
Come to think of it, a lot of good things on this planet were born out of spite. The actual message is in emoji.
Because of how SS is structured, I cannot accurately display the message. I've actually tried, and SS's infrastructure... or something... is not receptive to emojis. I'm not a backend developer, I don't know how these things work. @Marquis could possibly explain, but unless he does this in baby-talk, it all will come into one ear and exit out of the second.
The initial idea was born out of spite, for the most part, but also a need: I don't speak Arabic, and Google Translate is... well, not bad, but not very good either. Another problem is that because of my location - Israel, A LOT of Arabs swarm me with hate messages.
"PALESTINE WILL PREVAIL! DEATH TO ISRAEL!!!! I KILL YOU AND YOUR MOTHER!!!"
My father, by the way, was never mentioned. I'd appreciate if an Arab could explain how murdering my mother would more insulting than murdering my father.
But I digress.
Certainly, blocking one is easy, but with one down, a thousand more come. I needed either a repellant or some way to make peace with them. The best way to deal with trolls, in my opinion, is to out-troll them. There are thousands of videos on youtube of people either calling scammers, or being called by scammers and fucking with them on the phone. I took it as an example.
The first guy was difficult at first - he spoke Arabic, which didn't deter me from fucking with him, but made it difficult to understand what he wants. As long as he was speaking in Arabic.
Normally I respond to this by busting out Google Translate (GT henceforth), typing out "sorry, I don't know arabic <sweat_smile>, however, in this situation I've responded with the following:
Some fucking around later, I've established some basics on emojis in general:
1) Emojis come left to right, so there is some very basic structure.
2) There's a metric fuckload of them.
3) Through trial and error I learned, a lot of combinations suggest gay sex.
That's it. Other than two question marks - one gray/white, one red, and two exclamation marks, once again red and white, there's nothing. No commas, no periods, no stops or pauses. of any kind. With this in mind, the flow of conversation changes to... whatever you want to be, really. I've soon deduced that it's better to use new lines as full stops and have yet to come up with the equivalent of a comma. I'm starting to believe commas are not necessary with this.
Some more Arabic and emojis later the guy is finally starting to respond in a way that I can understand - English. He is surprisingly not angry, at least not as angry as I've expected him to be. He sends me a sticker of himself (his bitmoji, rather) on the floor with a sign of an empty gas tank above, and some time later he sent me another meaning he's going to work.
Some time later he said three words: "we are waiting". Having responded with a red question mark, which I've decided to claim for generic use, as it is more visible, he responded with two more words: "Ramadan Mubarak".
Of course! It's Ramadan! The Muslim... uh... holiday..? of fasting. Being not very acquainted with Islam, I'm not entirely sure whether it's considered a full-on holiday or just tradition.
Some more time passes and I decide to poke at him again. Being at work in what is basically a bunker, I have only a vague sentiment of the sun's position. I come out for a smoke every so often, but even then, I rarely leave "the cave". At least not until it's time to go home. Having nothing better to do, I poke at him again with a wave. He sends me a picture of his apartment/room. It's empty. I respond with the strongest :o (there are three tiers) and attempt to question him about his bare bones living place. He responds with Arabic at first, but switches to English through a translator and explains how during Ramadan one is to live a minimalist lifestyle.
Two cigarettes later I sign that I'm going back to work, and a magical thing happens: he responds with a thumbs up!
All of this happened yesterday.
During today's lunch, I've emoji'd at him some more and... HE RESPONDED IN KIND!
We had a vague conversation about the end of his fasting yesterday. He sent me a picture of a MASSIVE goat and various forms of meat food - kebab, stew, curry and salad. Certainly, salad is not a meat dish, but you need a side dish to consume a gigantic goat. Seriously, it was wider than high. Somehow it was able to stand with its toothpick looking legs.
He finished his description of consuming the goat with a happy :P. There are four kinds: happy, generic, amused/laughing, and mocking.
I interpreted it as if he is very pleased with eating a gigantic goat. Considering he had to wait until the sun is entirely gone to consume it, I imagine it was delicious.
And so we continued, speaking strictly in emoji. His "I WILL KILL YOU AND YOUR MOTHER AND YOUR COUNTRY RAAAAARGHHH!!!" attitude disappeared entirely and we shared our experiences of yesterday, experiences of today, and expectations from tomorrow. All in emoji, of course.
Having done alpha testing on this guy, I've branched out to more people. I've been looking specifically for Saudis at first to both troll and make friends with them (because snapchat keeps sending me to Saudis and Saudis to me). Soon I've branched to Americans and the French by friending a lot of Americans and French people.
It's not that I'm particularly fond of these nationalities, it's just that this is what Snapchat thinks is appropriate to me. I really wish I knew how to branch out to... I don't know... rest of Europe... Snapchat keeps me stuck with very certain parts of the world.
Every single time I initiated a conversation with my standard greeting
After some mild confusion from the receiving party, save for one particular case so far, the response has been mostly positive. I went as far as changing my name to :) <blue guy shouting>: emojispeak.
Having established to some degree that I speak strictly in emoji, some people have already come to me with the knowledge that I speak strictly in emoji. I've been spammed with some Arab flags (I don't know what country. I think Palestine?), after attempting to actually speak with them in emoji and question their anger and despise of Israel, we've established that I am an individual human that is not at fault for what this country did, whatever it was. I specifically cannot be put to fault for what other people before me did, and I alone cannot bring the change they want to see. I alone am meaningless and powerless. I am human. I am a single human. I am a mere ant.
My current hypothesis is that since emoji is a language that relies on hieroglyphics and not actual words like I'm typing right now, words that are difficult to interpret in other ways, words that are "stationary", for a lack of a better word, this keeps their views held in place.
With all this said?
