The social world got more interesting with the adoption of stickers, emojis, and gifs. The vibes it brings to chatting on social apps is something else and It surprises a lot of people to know that these things existed decades before we started using them in my part of the world. A lot of developed countries started using them early and we didn't get to know these things in Nigeria until the use of data-enabled phones became available to lots of people.
If I am not mistaken, I read that emojis have been in existence for over two decades but they didn't become very popular until 2010. I started using emojis a long time ago but before I became fond of them, I always get pissed when people reply me with an emoji instead of words during a serious conversation. I have friends who were obsessed with it and I find chatting with them annoying until I also became an addict.
I don't know who thought of creating those images to express our feelings but the person has done a great job we are enjoying today. Emojis were everyone's favorite until stickers became the trend.
Stickers are pictures, 1-2 secs clips sometimes with text and they give more details when expressing your feelings, thoughts, or describing a situation. They are more interesting to use than emojis and I couldn't resist the trend, I fell in love with the use of stickers like millions of people did across the world.
I don't see much difference between gifs and stickers. Gifs sometimes have a longer duration which makes it give a better understanding of your thought or feeling and the file size is always larger than that of stickers.
My obsession with stickers is something else and the conversation doesn't get spicy without applying them and I am looking forward to the time when they can be used during official conversation. I once tried it and my area manager was pissed, I don't know why he took it personally but I can tell that he is boring and sad.
Even though it will piss the person off, it wouldn't be as much as typing those things as a message. I mostly do this with my superiors at work then or while chatting with an older person who doesn't like to be corrected.
I have had several embarrassing times using stickers and that's the price I paid for my obsession with stickers. I was in charge of the church's social media in 2020 and we do hold sessions on WhatsApp.
We were having this worker's meeting online and the conversation became really interesting. After the pastor was done, we continue chatting and it got more interesting. Someone used a sticker and I quickly opened my sticker to reply with a sticker.
I was scrolling through and I mistakenly tapped a naughty sticker. I deleted it immediately but those who were active online saw it. Some people were even fast to screenshots and they teased me about it for a long time.
If I could make a change to sticker usage while chatting, it would be my device asking me to confirm if that sticker is the exact one I want to use to prevent me from using the wrong stickers unintentionally.
Whether emojis, stickers, or GIFs, I enjoy using them because it helps me express myself using pictures which saves me time as well.
