Emojis, Hashtags and Sindome
Where is the line?

I've seen some mention a blanket ban on 'emojis'. I have seen some IC stuff talking about them. I've come across the same in reference to hashtags. So I wanted to lay out my personal understanding on these things and get a feel for what others are thinking and hearing.

I don't think I've ever heard staff say that you can't use a smiley (or similar) face on text mediums. I have heard them say that, based on the diverging timeline, 'emojis' never really became the huge cultural phenomenon they are today. 'Emojis' are modern real world pop culture so need to be treated as such. Same with hashtags.

Using smiley face on letters or on the grid or whatever is probably fine as long as you keep to the CyberPunk theme and don't try and put too much focus on this modern real world pop culture thing. I think that hashtags get less leeway though.

If I see a hoodie with a smiley face sticker on it, that sounds cool and themely. If I see someone in a kimono made of fabric with patterned 'emoji' print I think that doesn't make sense given the Sindome World. If I see a smiley face thrown into a grid post I think there's a smiley, whatever. If I see someone using hashtags or emoji eggplant come fuck me sentences, I think that's pop culture I'd rather not see in the game.

I see IC memes the same way. They are a huge modern pop culture thing that were not really a big thing when the timelines diverged.

Even if you could argue that 'maybe they ended up being developed in the Sindome timeline', I'd still not want to see memes or emoji use or hashtag use in any way approaching what I see IRL. That is my personal opinion.

Just my take on this topic based on feedback I've personally received. What is your take? What does staff have for feedback?

For me, the clear line in the sand is SIC and in-person communication vs Grid comms.

SIC is a strange medium and shouldn't be riddled with emoji/hashtag speech. The voices in your head are strange enough.

The Grid utilizing hashtags and emoji's seems appropriate BUT I urge people to try and come up with their own in-game pop culture rather than replicate RL's.

It's hard to see for newer players but the majority of Sindomes slang, etiquette, social atmosphere has been created by players over time.

I think we should all focus on expanding each other's horizons with new themely jive rather than settle for RL equivalents.[/I]

The concepts of tagging content with topical tags and smilies goes back to the 1990s.

Emojis are simply a standard set of smilies. Supporting emojis therefore would mean allowing someone on their device to use their devices emojis to add smilies to a grid node or to translate their emoji character to a smilies. If we did this, the emojis would be green sindome designed emojis, something created by NLM to make symbol communication work - standardized smilies is very CP!

But in general, its silly to limit our technology choices by whether they were refined ideas before the timeline split or not.

Yeah, IC grid slang seems themely to me. Just don't make it IRL slang, if you can help it.

Like how Hypnospace Outlaw had "BWL" (Bursting With Laughter) instead of "LOL"

I think even 'lol' comes from the 90's? At least early 2000s. I've also heard people use 'lmao' and such. Maybe not 'rofl'. Either way, older, basic slang.

My opinion is simple. LOL, LMFAO and ROFL are all cheap, cheesy things and my characters will never know what they mean. Ever. They will forget it before your character finishes explaining them.

I would love to see players be creative and create their own versions of some of these things. Make up a fun and themely decker shorthand and use it. I could see some really interesting options here and have seen come do this in the past.

Casting for running a program. A Scorer being a master decker. Gotta crunch that code for compiling. Literally go down a list of common techie words and assign a flavorful decker version for it and make it live in the fame.

Same for PR guys making 9mis)information fliers and posters. Or trendy socialites making up ditzhead versions of things. Like : "A, M, F. That is so stupid" in place of O, M, G. (Anor Would Freak).

Just all better than all this because you are all probably ten times more creative than me!

To be clear one of the MAIN REASONS we disallow this kind of thing is because it blurs the line between IC and OOC. I want to know that I'm reading IN CHARACTER communications when I read them.

If the SIC looks like my facebook feed or an AOL chatroom from the90s, that is immersion breaking.

On top of being immersion breaking it makes it more difficult for us to illustrate and educate people on what is/is not acceptable.

If you see :) :) :) everywhere but you are told 'SIC is thoughts' that is tough to understand.

If you see people throwing around memes ICly but are told 'no modern day references' that is confusing.

With these rules in place it is MUCH MUCH easier to see when someone is FAILING to understand the IC world is not a chatroom, and for us as a community toto be able to correct that with education.

While hashtags originated on IRC to differentiate groups back in 1988, they only really became modern hashtags in about 2007 due to twitter. The use of them was, unless I'm mistaken, primarily to allow people to search/sort content specifically on twitter since it was kind of a free for all. To be fair about my personal biases though I feel they're grossly overused today and I hate them. In part because people will use more hashtags than actual words when posting something. Adding a tagging system to forum posts (or even nodes) would be helpful and make sense, but incorporating modern hashtags doesn't. To me anyway.

I've seen some people using emojis on the grid much like we use them today -- In place of using words to comment on something. While I agree that NLM themed emoji's would be better and more immersive than the ones used on devices today, I'd much rather have efforts go towards something interesting and useful like being able to scan and send photographs over the grid (maybe like an e-print for a lite term but in reverse) where they can then be printed out and you can look at people/things in the pictures.

Using emoticons ( :P ;) :-o etc.) in text based things seems fine to me and makes sense. But using them via SIC doesn't make a lot of sense since you're hearing it. It's like saying "Colon capital D" in a phone call. While people do it, it's kind of obnoxious and nerdy as all hell. Which could be themely for a decker with very little IRL social skills, but still spelled out as 'colon capital D' instead of just ':D'.

As far as things like lol and lmao, I'd much rather see new themely slang and shorthand occur that's mostly used by decker characters or those who spend a lot of time on the grid. I think something like IRC being implemented on the grid would be amazing and a great place for these things like BWL to naturally evolve. Especially since the grid has been existing in isolation from the internet (save for our hand-waved griddles). There's also the risk of bleed if you're using common irl acronyms since characters that don't use the grid hardly at all could hop on, see people using irl acronyms and understand everything. Where as a technically illiterate character hopping on the grid and seeing all of these weird shorthands and acronyms they don't understand makes plenty of sense.

But that's just my personal feelings on the matter.