John has an idea on Facebook.
I had a thought about the limits of emoticons.
So you know when you are chatting with someone, and you write something with a smile on your face and it is interpreted as though you were scowling? đ Some would argue that emoticons, (forming emotional *mostly* facial expressions made of joint text) solve the problem of emotional context in chat. I thank that perhaps the coming verbal age of emoji (icons in text exchanges) might just make this idea irrelevant, in fact. But in lieu of faces and body language and environmental context, I thinkthat emoticons don’t do enough work in explaining the context of messages. :/
So how about we clarify emotion with Stage Direction?
So imagine your most recent chat or status update. In fact, go look at it. We’ll be here… Okay? Okay.
So, imagine just giving your chat, or a list of your status updates to actors to act them out. You might see a wild variation between the emotional interpretation of each actor, sometimes because of style, and sometimes because there is no stage direction. Emotional interpretation of an audience has a lot to do with the movement and other factors on stage. And what is Facebook but a stage?
Second Audio Program Scripting for Social Media.
You may have heard of Second Audio Programming. Netflix just announced that it is supporting it for original programming, and lists a lovely description:
“Audio description is a narration track that describes what is happening on-screen, including physical actions, facial expressions, costumes, settings and scene changes. Customers can choose audio narration just like choosing the soundtrack in a different language.” – Netflix US & Canada Blog: Netflix Begins Audio Description for Visually Impaired – http://goo.gl/aEdHwK
If we were to do this, and make a cultural change within social media and chat in the way that we converse, we might resolve a lot of emotional confusion that we see now.
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