This chat is now over!

I wasn’t able do an article last week because I had to go back to the UK and over the next few articles I will remind you all why the UK now makes me extremely grumpy.

But this week I’m going to grump about emojis. I’m sure you all know what they are but for those that don’t know, they are the little smiley face things that pop up when you are typing a message or a WhatsApp. The trouble is now that it’s not just a smiley face. The reason I went back to the UK was unfortunately because one of my closest friends lost a family member. I was chatting to him on WhatsApp and I asked him what day the funeral was.

As I typed in the word funeral, up popped an emoji of a coffin! I couldn’t believe it. What idiotic moron programmer thought that would be a good idea? I cannot imagine how my friend would have felt if, for some reason, I didn’t check and I sent the message.

That then got me thinking about the whole emoji thing. I am reliably informed that there are a considerable amount of them that have a lot of secondary meanings. My 92-year-old mother-in-law uses WhatsApp and is fascinated by the emojis.

However, my daughter had to tell her to stay away from the aubergines, bananas, cherries and peaches (Google them). I can’t list all the different ones here because the editor won’t let me but have a look online. It’s crazy! I often get a smiley face or a sad face, but many times people send me a message with a picture that I have no clue what it represents so I ask them ‘what’s that mean?’

I got an upside down face?? Open your message app and have a look – I bet there’s over 50 per cent on there you don’t have a clue what they represent. Then there is the classic that so many people make the mistake of using.

LOL does NOT mean ‘lots of love.’ It means ‘laughing out loud.’ So do not do, as one of my older friends did when sending me a condolence message after my mum died, finish it with LOL. The whole thing is confusing, but one thing I do know is that once I just get an emoji or LOL as a reply to a message that chat is over!