11-year-old—but from a grown man, it looks
like a serial-killer cryptogram. Use one
emoji per text, unless you feel like repeat-
ing the same one a few times at the end of
a message for added emphasis. That alerts
people that your texts are straight.- Do not intersperse emojis
with words.
This is not Classic Concentration. I’m not
trying to solve a fucking puzzle here. If you
need to relay a lot of info to me in a text,
just skip out on capitalization and proper
spelling like a normal person.- Ninety percent of your
emoji use should be pro forma
replies to stuff.
Hey, your friend just got promoted! That
deserves a very tiny champagne-bottle
emoji sent his way. Really lets him know
you care.- Do not send a sincere.
You’re dying to get laid, but you can’t just
SAY you wanna get laid, or else you won’t
get laid. Well, thank God for the eggplant
emoji. That’s the penis emoji, which is use-
ful if you want to make a joke about getting
laid as a SERIOUS way of trying to get laid.
“We’re going to Chili’s? We may as well skip
right to after that!” But do NOT use up
your eggplant credit on dead-serious prop-
ositioning. That will end with a restraining
order. Same goes for the. You must
always be subtle when texting about butts.- Smileys are still lame as shit.
Smileys are for people who hang pictures of
cats in their cubicle. If you absolutely must
use them, be sure to slather them in 900 lay-
ers of bulletproof irony like the rest of the
Internet, like so: “Oh, I see Trump approved
whippings today. ”- Don’t use that goddamn
thinking-guy one.
I hate that emoji. Oh, did somebody just do
something suspicious or shady? SPIT IT
OUT. Don’t trot out the HMMMMM guy and
pretend that’s a courageous move.- If you spend any time searching
for the perfect emoji, you’ve
already screwed this up.
I know I’ve sat there for entire minutes,
scouring each little screen for some new,
rarely used emoji to WIN whatever stupid
exchange I’m having. Then I remember,
“What am I doing?” and I fall back on the
classics. There’s a reason no one uses the.- If you’re a white guy and
you’re using the , you’d better
have a very good reason. - The is a good way to halt
any endless exchange.
We all have a family member (Mom) who
believes a text exchange is a perpetual-
motion thread that must never be disrupted
or else one of the participants will drift
away and die, like Leo at the end of Titanic.
The best way to stop this text diarrhea:
a simple. That tells Mom you’re all
good and that she needs to go find one of
your siblings to harass with updates about
what Congress just did.- Unless you’re on Tinder, do
not send emojis to random
people, service professionals, or
anyone whose full name is not
stored in your phone.
For instance: your Uber driver, your doctor,
or the lady who just interviewed you for a
job. It’s weird. Emoji has a strange and del-
icate intimacy; it works when you’re trying
to woo a lady, but not when you’re complain-
ing to Verizon tech support. Keep that in
your holster, kiddo.- The only emoji you really need
is the.
So pithy, so versatile, yet so friendly!drew magary is a gq correspondent.A FEW YEARS AGO, I read
an article about howpeople in Asia were sending one
another tiny pictures via text
message instead of typing out
actual words, and I thought
to myself, “P≠t! That’s ridiculous.
We Americans would never do
anything so cutesy and childish as
to communicate via CLIP ART!
Around here we use full words and
drink lots of bourbon. GRRRRRR!”
Yeah, I was wrong. Emojis now play
a vital role in courtship, news alerts, and
NBA free agency, and they’re only going to
get more popular because they are cute and
easy—just like you! Indeed, they are the per-
fect communication method for Americans
under 30, a group of people who are as lazy
as they are whimsical.
But what if you’re not under 30? What
if you’re a grown-ass man like me? Do
you want to communicate e∞ciently with
friends, or family, or people you would like
to fuck? If so, you’d better have some quality
emoji game or you will die. The chal-
lenge here is to preserve your aura of worldly
sophistication without turning into one of
those old dudes who creep everyone out by
fumbling young-people stu≠. Some rules...
- One emoji per emoji, please.
My kid sends me text messages that are just
whole blocks of randomly selected emo-
jis. This is a very cute thing to get from an
68 GQ.COM MAY 2017
NEW LINE/EVERETT COLLECTIONGQINTELLIGENCE THEMALESPECIES