I spent a day responding to Facebook posts with stickers

 I got in a goofy mood the other night and stupidly posted on my Facebook profile that I had half a mind to respond only in Facebook stickers the next day.The response was an epic stream of stickers from friends (those who don't have the script that removes stickers from FB) and I knew that I had trapped myself: I would have to step up and put my stickers where my fingers were. Or something like that.To prepare, I downloaded a lot more sticker sets to widen my vocabulary. You can't use stickers in posting, so I had noted that and said it would only be in comments and responses. Fortunately, I didn't tie myself down to that in private messages, so I was able to have some somewhat normal conversations, back-channel.Being me, I forgot when I first hopped on Facebook in the morning and did post a couple of comments with actual typed words. I quickly recovered and set about finding the stickers that expressed what I was feeling. I tried very hard to find the right stickers - not just any sticker, but one that expressed more or less what I would have said if I'd used words. There is one sticker set of Internet-speak (OMG, YOLO, WTF and more), and though I did use it, I tried not to rely too much on that.My activity feed yesterday looked much like this:So far, I know this is a big whatever. "Gee, Amy. You're weird." Or, "So that's what you were doing yesterday."I'm one of those souls who loves Facebook stickers. I find some of them very odd - Sinister Oyster, for example. Others I find quite endearing - Bun is a favorite of mine. I try to use them sparingly, but appropriately. Except when I get in private message sticker fights with friends, where the main goal is to sticker them into submission. I WIN!I'm a big history and language wonk, though. I'm very curious about and enjoy the evolution of language (but I will never accept using "over" as synonymous with "more than" - I'm not a savage). Emoji are a throwback, actually, to the cavemen's pictograms and Egyptian hieroglyphics. They probably bear more similarity to Chinese, Japanese and other Eastern written languages, where a symbol can express an entire word or concept, than they do to those that use the Roman alphabet.And don't we always say a picture is worth a thousand words? It's true, an image can express a complicated concept succinctly and clearly. However, they're also more open to interpretation than words alone are (though we all know that people can interpret exactly the same words in different ways). The problem is, they can be even more subject to cultural misunderstandings than straight language might be.So what did I learn?

• It takes a lot of thought - and time - to actually communicate well with stickers. There are so many stickers, and you wouldn't want to get repetitive. I tried not to use many stickers more than once. Going through the sets and finding the image that I believed truly expressed what I had to say was sometimes simple, but often not. It might take me upwards of five minutes to find the right sticker.
• If you actually put that time and thought into using stickers to communicate, most people kind of enjoy it. I'm sure that was colored by the fact that many friends had seen my post from the night before and knew what I was doing. They were definitely more amenable to it, and one friend even turned off her sticker blocker so she could see what I was up to for the day.
• We should put as much time and thought into the words we type. In some ways, my communication was more genuine and thoughtful by using stickers, because I really took the time to express myself. Instead of just posting a quick, "LOL" or "*facepalm*" or the like, I spent a little time finding the right way to say what I wanted to say. I tend to respond very quickly on Facebook - I think I will begin to take a little more time, and put some real thought into responses.
• I probably won't use stickers as much anymore (except in those private message sticker fights), in large part because it is time-consuming to use them well. And just like a well-timed F-bomb, the sparing use of stickers will give them more heft when they are used. If you can even say that a sticker has "heft". I rarely curse in my writing, because I believe in the power of words, and want those words to have power. Dropping F-bombs left and right, for me, robs the word of its power. The same for using stickers. You can get a genuine laugh out of someone if you time the image right and use it appropriately. Genuine laughter's pretty cool.

So. That was my experiment in stickers. Not earth-shattering by any stretch of the imagination. But fun. Thanks to all my friends for putting up with me yesterday.