It’s time to talk about the status of emoticons

In the United States, people are obsessed with emojis; in Japan, OTAKU created emoticons that can express everything; and in China, emoticons that combine pictures and text have shown a viral development trend that is unstoppable and is gradually invading the daily culture of us, the successors of socialism.

In this article, we will talk about the lessons that emoticons have taught us over the years, and see what kind of culture is contained behind these cute, mean, or dirty expressions, and whether their "money" prospects are bright.

Emoji culture: mean, cute, dirty

If I have to classify expressions into three categories, I hope there are three types: mean, dirty, and cute.

Cheap expression

If the history of emoticons in my country can be counted from the violent comics, then the mean expression can definitely be considered the ancestor of emoticons, and the panda face has been the undisputed leader for many years.

The photoshopping of human faces is the key feature of this series, probably because facial expressions are always more vivid and richer than two-dimensional images, and it is also easier to express subtle changes in emotions. As for the old saying, the prototype faces of emoticon packs such as Jacky Cheung, the Pope, Director Kim, and Fu Jingyong, which were selected after years of screening, are extremely adaptable. When paired with the expression drawings, not only does there be no sense of disobedience, but it is even more funny.

For example, if you just say "You are awesome", it may not make much sense, but if you add an exaggerated and humorous face, the emotion will be emphasized by bold and underlined:

If you make full use of your imagination, the derived emoticons will be even more mean, for example:

There are two possibilities as to why humans use these expressions with a friendliness level of 0. One is to express unfriendly emotions, and the other is to suppress unfriendly emotions. How to say it? Everyone can curse at others, but it is difficult to curse at others without offending them.

When you type text or send voice messages, if you are not satisfied enough, the other party will also feel hostile; but the expression is different. With Jacky Cheung's typical expression, by the time it is transmitted to the other party, the hostility received has been weakened a lot, and there is only a feeling of being mean and asking for a beating, which makes people angry and funny. The advantage of using a mean expression is that it allows you to vent your emotions without involving others.

Therefore, most people also call this type of emoticon a fighting emoticon. Thanks to our country's netizens, the context of using emoticons has now become richer and can be developed into a complete conversation. When you encounter this situation, what you want to say has already been thought of by others and turned into emoticons. How convenient and easy to use!

All emoticons that can be widely circulated are full of exquisite words. When all the humorous and abusive language are put together with pictures, a picture battle will always make you laugh.

If we talk about literary literacy, the expression of a bitch should indeed have the highest score in Chinese. It expresses emotions strongly, uses appealing language, and vividly reveals the essence, leaving a deep impression on people - the curses without using dirty words are particularly wonderful; it also makes good use of exaggeration, irony, parallelism and other shameful techniques to amplify emotions. Some people say that the circulation of emoticons implies the loss of expressive ability, but looking at these unconventional panda face emoticons, I have nothing to say. I just hate that the wisdom of Chinese character culture did not allow these emoticons to become sophisticated after the founding of the People's Republic of China?

Dirty expression

Dirty pictures have long been an inseparable part of emojis. If you change its color, it becomes what young people often call - pornographic pictures.

In the past two years, dirty pictures are probably the only emoji-related internet celebrity that has been continuously in the news, such as security guards being sent back for using emojis, and students being punished for posting dirty pictures, etc. When you open the emoticon package, you will find that all the words and pictures are directly or indirectly related to sex. These hints, metaphors and even similes have unknowingly swelled the ranks of dirty expressions.

It often plays on the edge, and being seemingly obscene but not obscene is one of its characteristics, and using two-dimensional characters is also a common technique; to put it another way, it makes sexual culture closer to the masses. Conservative Chinese people shyly avoid talking about "sex", but at the same time they are curious and spread dirty expressions. "I just watched it for fun, the expression was drawn by someone else" - maybe there is a wretched little princess living in everyone's heart.

Cute expressions

Compared with the previous two categories, the cute style is undoubtedly a refreshing style in the emoticon package. Wanting a hug, kiss, or being lifted up high, as long as the emotions are expressed with cute expressions, most of the time they are pleasing.

The meaning of this kind of cute expressions is not just to be cute. Sometimes, it is like a little elf that creates an atmosphere, subtle and delicate, silent and subtle. Its application scenarios are everywhere. When you are trying to resolve embarrassment, saying hello, or not knowing what to say, the cute emoticons always come at the right time and are versatile. It can adjust your friendliness and also reduce the cost of communication by allowing both parties to tacitly agree.

It is worth mentioning that more and more subtle emotions, or emotional complexity, are difficult to express simply. Especially when we don’t need to express any strong emotions, but only need to send an emoticon to set off the text and continue the feelings between each other... the panacea effect of cute emoticons is revealed.

These days, if you don’t have emoticons, you’d be embarrassed to say you’re a hot topic

The more you come into contact with emoticons, the more you will agree with one truth: a hot topic that does not have emoticons is not a real hot topic. Yes, if a hot topic is in the news but no emoticons are produced, it means that it has never really caused any trouble in its life. What’s the difference between it and salted fish?

Let's count the hot emojis of this year, from the FB emojis, the Spring Festival Gala emojis at the beginning of the year, to the college entrance examination, to Fu Yuanhui, to the friendship boat, to Lanshou Xianggu, and even to the Alipay bill not long ago (yes, even the Alipay bill has related emojis), the real hot spots and emojis complement each other and enhance each other. Emojis require cultural identity, and hot topics are spreading virally with the help of emojis.

Under this trend, celebrities and expressions have been combined together unknowingly. He has the face of an idol, but is destined to be an emoticon - this is how the fans will tease their idols. There is no expression without idols. You can make appropriate spoofs or capture the idols’ expressions to let them step down from the altar and stay in the emoticon album. You will immediately feel a lot more intimacy.

Think about it from another perspective. The proliferation of idol emoticons is actually a side reflection of fan culture and an auxiliary data of the star's popularity index. If you love him, make him into an emoticon! The more expressions this star has, the more popular he is. There is nothing wrong with that.

Naturally, some people saw the business opportunities behind such a popular emoticon package, and countless entrepreneurs rushed to invest in this blue ocean. It’s a pity that not every emoticon creator can become Line’s.

Monetization Problem

If we search in the App Store or major Android application markets, we can find many applications related to emoticon packages. These applications not only have similar names, but also different functions. They are nothing more than emoticon search, download, and forward to WeChat. More advanced ones also provide emoticon DIY function, which can use various templates to add custom text.

These features seem to capture the needs of users: they need to select appropriate emoticons in a timely manner, keep up with hot topics, and create personalized emoticon packages during chats, but the actual experience is not satisfactory. For example, the "Send to WeChat" function, after WeChat blocked the external interface of emoticons, the display effect of emoticons directly shared to WeChat from these applications is completely different from that of normal sending, as shown in the following figure:

Friends who receive this type of emoticon need to click the download arrow to display the normal image. This function alone is enough to discourage many users from using it. In other words, to use this type of emoticon application, you probably have to go through: open the application → search → save to mobile phone → click "send picture" from WeChat. Such a cumbersome process and fragmented experience completely destroy the pleasure of picture battle.

If user experience can be improved through technical means, then copyright issues are something these emoticon apps cannot avoid, and this is the topic we will discuss in the last section.

The main source of income for this type of application is currently advertising, including advertising displays on startup pages and within applications.

Many applications have also opened corresponding WeChat public accounts. However, most of the public accounts that publish emoticons are not doing well. The daily push notifications are just a simple stack of emoticon packages on a certain theme. A few public accounts can make some adapted emoticon packages, and the effects seem to be good, but given that the operators are commercial companies, it is difficult to say whether there is any suspicion of infringement against the adapted emoticons.

Lack of originality is the embarrassment faced by such public accounts, and of course, it is also a major problem for my country's emoticon industry.

In addition, there are applications such as "Magic Film" and "Picture Fighting Artifact" that focus on picture social networking, but the fact is that the most popular emoticon production bases are still communities such as Weibo, Baidu Tieba, and Bilibili where the UGC model is mature enough, and various picture fighting behaviors take place on the two major chat softwares WeChat and QQ. It seems unrealistic to grab traffic from these giants.

So, does WeChat, with an average daily active user base of 768 million, have an inherent advantage in the development of the emoticon industry?

WeChat emoticons

When it comes to the commercialization of emoticons, Line is undoubtedly the leader. In 2015, Line's sales of emoticons alone accounted for a quarter of its annual revenue. Together with various peripheral products, Line earned a total of US$268 million from emoticons. Its offline store LINE FRIENDS is so popular that it is comparable to big-name stores.

However, compared with Line, which launched emoticon stickers in 2011, WeChat seemed to be a little slow in developing emoticon packages, and it was not until November 2013 that it launched the emoticon store. In July 2015, the “WeChat Emoji Open Platform” began accepting emoji submissions from individuals or organizations.

WeChat also initially planned to borrow Line's model, such as charging for emoticons, which is a major source of revenue for Line. In addition, the number of users who pay monthly for stickers or games is very stable, maintaining at around 8 million (data from 2015).

However, in the Chinese market where payment awareness is weak, WeChat's paid emojis have not been well received. According to WeChat's 2015 performance report, only 5.2% of users were willing to pay for WeChat emojis. The rampant cracked versions of WeChat emojis on the Internet also indirectly confirm that the charging model is still not suitable for my country's national conditions.

In the end, WeChat had to cancel the paid emojis and switch to a reward model.

Although there are many classic emojis in WeChat emoji store, such as Changcaoyantuanzi and Yemengjun, when it comes to the various popular emoji packages in WeChat, the first thing that comes to your mind may be the following:

There is also this:

Or something like this:

Compared with the high-definition images with delicate strokes in the emoticon store, these custom emoticons are obviously much rougher, but they have a different kind of humor.

The reason why those cute things on Line are so popular is that Japan is the birthplace of cute culture, and most of the emoticons in Line are taken from users' favorite movies, TV shows, games, etc. (Line has purchased a large number of copyrights of Sanrio and Disney's works), which can be recognized by users.

(Emojis from anime and games account for a large proportion of Line)

But the WeChat emoticon store is different. No matter how cute the emoticons in your emoticon store are, they are not as down-to-earth as Min Gugu and Wuli Taotao, which gather the wisdom of the majority of netizens and can better express our joys, sorrows, anger and happiness.

The popularity of third-party emoticons, or customized emoticons, is also one of the reasons why WeChat official emoticons (including those from the emoticon store) find it difficult to dominate the chat window like Line. After all, no matter how professional an emoticon artist is, it is difficult to compete with the power of hundreds of millions of netizens.

In today's world where "dirty culture" is prevalent, WeChat's official emoticons, which only have cute and mean attributes, obviously cannot meet the needs of users.

These emoticons with foul language and borderline pornographic content will naturally not appear in the WeChat emoticon store, but they are a common way of expression used by many young people today.

So, can the authors of WeChat emoticon store make money? The answer is yes, but only a few people at the top of the pyramid succeed. For example, the Changcaoyantuanzi, which became popular from Weibo to WeChat, is a cute creature that traveled through the three-dimensional world. It not only became the first "national expression" in the WeChat expression store to be sent over 10 billion times, but also gradually spawned some comics and peripherals.

The cartoon characters such as Refrigeration Girl, Little Zombie, Pearl Rabbit, and Rui Xiaotu are also from the same family as Yan Tuanzi, and all come from the "Twelve Buildings Studio". At present, the Twelve Buildings Studio has formed a relatively complete production line in the development of WeChat emoticon products: discovering original painters, packaging images, promotion, value development, and authorization of derivative products.

Although Twelve Buildings cannot be compared with Line in terms of IP materialization, the two have similarities in attracting fans, exploring derivatives, and thus creating an emoticon industry chain. This may be one of the ways to commercialize emoticons. However, at present, studios like Twelve Buildings are still very rare, and most emoticon authors are still "individual businesses" working alone. It is difficult for them to achieve the scale of Twelve Buildings or Uncle Tongdao. Not to mention the physicalization of emoticon IPs, it is very difficult to create an emoticon IP.

Infringement or not, that is the question

In December last year, eLong Travel Network was sued by Ge You in court because it used the "Ge You lying down" emoticon in its official Weibo to promote its hotel booking service. This incident also exposed the problem of the dilution and disintegration of the awareness of portrait rights in an age where "anyone can become an emoticon."

Of course, for most celebrities, the emoticons created by fans or netizens through spontaneous screenshots are often a reflection of their popularity. Many artists’ studios and TV stations will also actively contribute to the WeChat emoticon store to achieve publicity effects.

For us spectators, basically as long as it does not involve commercial purposes, there is no problem in posting idol’s emoticons at will.

Then you may ask, do the various spoof "Erkang" emoticons on the Internet involve personal attacks and infringements on his reputation rights? This is the truth, but since netizens are a widely virtual entity and do not have a clear subject, even if the actor himself is extremely disgusted by this, he has no way to sue.

In a word, the use of real-life emoticons by individuals for non-profit purposes usually does not constitute infringement, provided, of course, that it does not violate the law.

If the spoofs of netizens are a reflection of creativity, then the various "same styles" in the emoticon store just highlight the lack of imagination of these professional painters. Just take a quick look at the emoticon store and you will see many familiar faces.

(The left one is from WeChat Emoji Store, the right one is Line Jihuitu)

(The left one is from the WeChat emoji store, and the right one is the Line Shiba Inu)

Six-year-old Line, standing in the WeChat emoji store, sees the shadow of himself when he was three years old.

In addition to imitating Line, various emoticons whose origins are unknown from the Internet have also become a major source of inspiration for the authors of the emoticon store. For example, the "elegant and dignified" series that became popular last year, the enduring Jin Guanzhang and mushroom head, the late-night food greetings that aroused hatred, various yellow faces, inexplicably funny, and chubby knee hugs...

The left one is the web prototype, and the right one is from the emoji store:

Basically, the popular emoticons on the Internet can be quickly processed into a set of emoticon packages by artists. It is like the public sifting through the sand to select a wave of popular emoticons, which are then refined and detailed by these artists, which can be said to be standing on the shoulders of the masses.

Regarding copyright issues, the WeChat Emoji Store has clear regulations in the "Audit Standards":

You must own the copyright of the emoticon work or have obtained authorization from the author

Do not infringe on others' trademark rights, copyrights, patent rights and other intellectual property rights and other legal rights

Do not submit works whose rights are unclear (for example: secondary creations, fan works, etc.)

But why is the homogeneity of emoticons still so serious? On the one hand, the WeChat emoticon store is not responsible for the copyright review of emoticon packages. It will only conduct relevant verification after receiving a report, and is in a relatively passive state.

On the other hand, as users, we often don’t care about the true origin of these emoticons or whether they are similar to other emoticons. As long as they are easy to use and fun, it’s fine. This has largely fueled the popularity of these “pseudo-original” emoticons.

As to whether these emoticons are suspected of plagiarism, we dare not make any rash assertions here, but it needs to be pointed out that if the "authors" of the emoticon packages only imitate and borrow without their own creativity, it is impossible for them to create truly good works, let alone form an industrial chain and develop emoticon package IP. However, the proliferation of imitations will hit the real emoticon creators, and bad money will drive out good products. Such an emoticon industry is ultimately unhealthy.

Look at the various weird emoticons created by netizens. In fact, as long as imagination is not exhausted, emoticons will never die.

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The author of this article @爱范儿 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!