In a of 30 trend reports for 2020, the most commonly predicted cultural shift was the continued blur between the physical and digital. Online and offline are progressively overlapping — from and , to and . There’s only ever been one “real life”, but the line between the virtual and visceral is thinning. Or: Why We’re Collectively Obsessed With Facebook’s Avatars, GIFs & Animal Crossing’s Villagers. meta-analysis virtual clothes AR makeup industrial digital twins synthetic influencers Expression surrogates augment our communication. In light of the pandemic, with life moving online, this lack of distinction has only accelerated. We can Zoom to celebrate your birthday , but the congregation still very much . We’re together, but not together . It’s all quite perplexing when we stop to think about it. virtually real together More noteworthy, the surge online has concentrated this top 2020 trend to one area: communication. Required to express thoughts and feelings without touch, direct eye contact, or the ability to discern through screens, many are struggling, facing . More, burdened with heavy, complex and unfamiliar emotions, the challenge of articulation compounds. It’s just too hard to say what we want or share what we mean, let alone deduce it all through the 0’s and 1's. micro expressions Zoom Fatigue One burgeoning solution? Delegate someone else to communicate you. for Leveraging a proxy for the delivery of our thoughts reads like something out of science fiction, but it’s and only becoming relied upon. While Emoji’s are helping flourish our messages like , Memoji’s are acting as stand-ins doing much of the heavy lifting for our expression. Facebook’s new avatars complicate communication as another party is now introduced, but it also makes communication , and often more fun. Their props help. When not saying it, is, the dynamics of the interaction change. As a result, there’s less required responsibility, courage or exertion. Snap’s, Apple’s and Facebook’s avatars help us “say” what our words cannot, or what we to say ourselves. already a norm more hand gestures much easier I’m my avatar don’t want In Animal Crossing, and many online social games from to , the creation of an avatar, becomes an exercise in identity construction. And in participating, the creation of a “mask” makes communication even more freeing. Sometimes this freedom can be liberating — ask any gamer. Still, these avatars help eliminate barriers. When the context also changes, like to a cutes-y, pastoral village, characters’ words are reinterpreted. For Animal Crossing, environment influences meaning, helping us out even more while communicating. said it best, “The medium is the message.” Fortnite GTA too McLuhan GIFs are perhaps the most fascinating tool, as users are not leveraging self-representational or imaginative renderings of themselves to communicate, but rather using an entirely person. To declare my excitement, I’ll deploy ’s excitement. But his celebrity is more than novelty. In many cases, Vaughn is able to express excitement more than I or my avatar can. If a picture is worth a thousand words, GIFs add a few more. Further, Vaughn’s excitement is embedded with cultural data that serves as a secondary message: Ex. “ is great.” That layer requires cultural literacy, though. Even deeper, there’s a of identity. The gender, race, age or species of the star of the GIF questions our relationship to that stand-in. Ever catch yourself spending too long searching for the perfect GIF to encapsulate your emotions, but also one that’s “closest” to resembling other Vince Vaughn precisely Wedding Crashers convolution you? In a time-crunched world, all these visual representations are quick to summon and consume. They also transcend language. But despite their upside, what happens when we over-emphasize the avatar and respond to , overlooking the sharer? What’s gained is clear. But what’s lost when we misconstrue the mask with the person behind it? Are we separating the two? them One way of putting it is: we’re effectively fashioning tools to thrive in a relatively new environment. Another is: we’re outsourcing our speech as we struggle to convey our own convictions. I’m unsure a GIF can capture that unease.

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