Seán Moncrieff: Are young people really so offended by emojis in the workplace? Give them some credit

During the pandemic, there was a whole thing with an emoji. The Sunday Independent got hold of some text exchanges between Stephen Donnelly and Tony Holohan, most of which dealt with things like the rollout (or not) of antigen tests, and the R-rate in various parts of the country. You know: the stuff we’d all rather forget about.

But what attracted an unlikely amount of attention was the Minister’s propensity for using the thumbs up emoji: Holohan would say something about today’s transmission rate in Kerry. Donnelly would reply with a thumbs up.

To an old fella like me, this seemed like an uncontroversial method of communication. People have been using this gesture in the real world to indicate thanks or that all is well for hundreds if not thousands of years.

I’ve yet to meet a young adult so insulated from reality that, for instance, they would be unaware of the greater meaning of a thumbs up gesture

But it turned out that Donnelly and Holohan (who also dabbled in thumbsuppery) had been getting it all wrong. In the ever-morphing world of digital communication, the thumbs up emoji had come to mean the opposite of what they thought. Rather than simple thanks, it expressed a passive-aggressive termination of any exchange; a way of saying: I’m sick of listening to your nonsense. Go away. It’s rather like the way Cork people say: I will ya; meaning anything but.

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For a few days, this emoji howler was actual news. Any social media post by the Minister attracted hundreds of replies, each one an erect thumb. He was quizzed about it on serious news programmes.

It was during one of the many lockdowns; everyone was bored.

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Yet – and I use the word in the loosest possible sense – it’s still an issue. There has been a rash of news stories recently about how people in their early 20s feel assaulted by the flurry of thumbs up emojis in the workplace. There was a survey among them. A majority felt it should be banned. Articles liberally quoted from a Reddit debate on the subject, with quotes like “It’s super rude if someone just sends you a thumbs up”.

This in turn prompted more articles offering advice on what emojis you shouldn’t use for fear of offending a member of Gen Z; or even more gravely, appear old by misusing them. “Old”, apparently, is over 35.

There are many publications that specialise in these sorts of pieces: the Daily Mail adores them. Factual standards can be a bit flimsy: a single quote from an anonymous social media user is blown up to represent an entire generation. The subject matter might lean towards the Toy Department of life, yet just below the fluff there seems to be a consistent theme: that everything that comes out of the minds and mouths of young adults is nonsense. They exist in a social media bubble; they are cripplingly sensitive. They are narcissistic, lazy and so different from the rest of us it’s as if a race of aliens had arrived here.

All that worrying about the environment; all that identifying with a sexuality or a gender: it’s just hysteria, or an immature phase

I know a few young adults. I’m even related to some of them. Like the rest of us, they can occasionally come out with a sentiment that’s a bit daft. But I’ve yet to meet one so insulated from reality that, for instance, they would be unaware of the greater meaning of a thumbs up gesture; or that they would be mortally offended if an over-35-year-old messaged one to them.

The old have always rolled their eyes a bit at the young; and the young have always regarded themselves as unique. But this steady drip of stories, each one revealing the latest alleged Gen Z thin-skinned foible, seeks to undermine not just that generation, but everything they are concerned about. All that worrying about the environment; all that identifying with a sexuality or a gender: it’s just hysteria, or an immature phase. If we grown-ups refuse to take it seriously, if we treat them like bratty children, they’ll get over it. Historically, that’s always worked.