Le emoji nacquero nel 1999 in Giappone, quando i maggiori operatori del Paese decisero di cooperare per creare un insieme di piccole e semplici grafiche scambiabili via sms. Nel 2008 prima Google le inserì in Gmail, poi Apple nell’iPhone, facilitandone la diffusione nel resto del mondo (solo nel 2010 ricevettero l’approvazione del consorzio Unicode, diventando così uno standard).

La storia, raccontata recentemente da Fast Company, aiuta a conferire legittimità a questi simboli colorati, soprattutto se come me li ritenete un po’ infantili (pur facendone inevitabilmente uso):

How powerful is it that this language just takes a few marks and all of a sudden a completely new experience is read? It’s not surprising that that comes from languages that have a basis in graphic symbols—from Japan or from China. Those languages are constructed with similar types of images. A tree looks like a tree in Chinese (木), and a forest is multiple trees (森林). It’s very appropriate that we’re following the lead of languages that are more or less graphic. It’s actually really, really powerful. This was not a way to communicate 10 years ago, but now there’s nary an email that I don’t send out without a smiley face or something on it.