#gabrielgeisel

We got the ugly watermark but its whatever  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

As you can see, I have a lot on my wall. Most of them are pieces of art that have been made for or by me. Another large chunk of my collection is merch, mostly Ghost merch. I have very few actual photographs. On the far left you can see two strips of photo booth photos, center left you can see a single Polaroid, and far right there is a photograph of myself and a photocard with my Upward Bound Program graduating class on it, sent to me by the program assistant director. I think that having these few photos next to all these pieces of art and other mementos elevates their status for me. These few photographs become more like art than the photographs permanently living in my phone, even the “artsy” Instagram photos. While I treat most of the photos saved to my phone as information (some even just being pictures of a printer code, event flyer, or schedule) that is for me to use and share, I treat my wall photos more like art—they have no real purpose other than to make me feel good when I look at them.

The popularity of this gif plays off of the nihilist culture and humor that is popular with young people, especially teens, usually to the dismay of their concerned parents. Though it is from a kids movie, it captures something about the resignation of young people in an ironic way, which is the only real way to like something as a young person on the internet.

I had never had the pleasure of using or seeing an animoji in use outside of Apple’s promotional videos for the iPhone they launched with, since I have been a user of Samsung Galaxy phones for years. To me, animojis are a forgettable expressive option in a world where emojis and Snapchat already exist. Emojis fill the niche of in-text expression, while Snapchat allows you to easily use your own facial expressions—and additionally gives you the option to use “lenses” overlaid on your pictures and video. I do not believe that animojis can be characterized as co-speech gestures since they are simply a recording of your facial movements mapped onto the model of an existing emoji. However, depending on the emoji you choose to be your “face” in this recording, the animoji could function as an emblem, encoding meaning that goes beyond facial expression and speech, therefore performing a symbolic function in self-expression through the used of this iPhone feature.