The Last Laugh (Cry)

Ok then Gen Z has deemed the laughingcrying emoji uncool yaniki cancelled Oh how the mighty have fallenIt was only 2015 the Oxford Dictionaryrsquos Word of the Year was not a word but this same emoji official name ldquoFace with Tears of Joyrdquo Even then there were dissenters The Daily Edge wrote ldquolook at its stupid headrdquo declaring ldquonothing is so funnyrdquo In 2016 Abi Wilkinson wrote in The Guardian the graphic was intrinsically obnoxious reminding her of smug elites who gloat at human suffering It is a favourite of trolls who plonk it under every serious post to trivialise it like bullying schoolboys Nevertheless that emoji has topped the charts all through till 2020And then death by uncoolness ldquoI saw older people using it like moms older siblings and generally older people so I stopped using itrdquo a 21yearold man told CNN Business Yaniki young people donrsquot want to use it because older people use it so much It is seen as exaggerated and insinceremdashthe provenance of older peopleI get that For instance I would like to outlaw what I call the sarcastic namaste emoji because it reminds me of all the oldies from my youth joining their hands with ldquobaksh do aur padhai kar lordquo and movie charactersrsquo ldquoshukriya Ramesh babu for insulting merdquo as also the extra devotional face of Gulshan Kumar in mata ne bulaya hai music videos My feeling too was nothing is that serious ok Even now when someone responds to a compliment with that insincere namaste I yearn for a Manorama or Lalita Pawar emoji to communicate ldquobade aaye namaste emoji behjne walerdquo but they donrsquot existhow ridiculousIf you are looking here and there to avoid being identified as an oldie relax Once intergenerational meant people with grey hair versus people with nongrey hair Now itrsquos far more um nuanced With this emoji itrsquos Gen Zs telling millennials they arenrsquot coolmdashor youngmdashanymore If you are a middleaged survivor of millennials support group member I know that you are right now sending a dozen laughingcrying emojis in your heart while saying lsquowhat goes around comes aroundrsquo If you are a millennial you may be trying to come up with a meme that is simultaneously sincere and ironicThe laughingcrying emoji may indeed have been best suited to the millennials era where ironic selfawareness was used to offset a sometimes theoretical political engagement primarily carried out online as in ldquoI know itrsquos problematic but I canrsquot help posting another selfierdquo ldquoI know Irsquom privileged but I am wokerdquo Laughing and crying Post pandemic perhaps this is not culturally tenable By the way the new emoji to indicate amusement is the rather recessive skullmdashvisual equivalent of Gen Z slang ldquoIrsquom deadrdquo This oddly reminds me of an even older generation of Americansmdashthose like any character in Friends who would say ldquothatrsquos hilariousrdquo instead of actually laughing leaving you perplexed and suspicious about their amusementIntergenerational power struggles play out cultural patricide declaring those in power irrelevant through uncoolness to supplant them As statues are brought down periodically so cool and fashion are declared meaningless and stripped of all symbolic and material value But only to be rediscovered some time later reclaimed refurbished and resold laughingcrying all the way to the bankParomita Vohra is an awardwinning Mumbaibased filmmaker writer and curator working with fiction and nonfiction Reach her at paromitavohramiddaycom