
I really don’t know how this one got passed all of us! We are a little overdue for this post (to say the least), but nonetheless it is still of high interest to us, regardless of its age. There is no question – “Emoticons”, or “Emojis” have broke through the texting and tweeting world with great force. Nowadays, it is impossible to have a text conversation or go through your Twitter or Instagram feed without seeing a post containing an emoji icon. When these icons came into the mobile market, they were at first in fact made only available on IOS devices. In fact, I remember when I finally installed my emoji app on my old iphone 4 – I was on the train heading to work. Not long after, emojis came out for Android devices. The world was officially hooked.
But would it be possible to use them in their own complete, unique form of language? Furthermore, would it be possible to write a book using only these emoji icons? The answer is in fact yes.
Introducing Emoji Dick, Fred Benenson’s take on the Melville Classic Moby Dick, written entirely in – you guessed it – emojis.
This rendition was in fact published a few years back, and has since been entered into the Library of Congress. It was funded through a successful Kickstarter campaign, where 83 backers surpasses a pledge goal of over $3,500 with a grand total of $3,676 raised for the project. The current version is available in two formats – a black and white softcover for $40, and an exclusive color hardcover for $200.
So what does the Emoji Dick look like, and how does it read? Here is an example:
How was the book translated? Over 800 workers via Amazon Mechanical Turk spent a grand total of 3,795,980 seconds to turn Melville’s timeless classic into a post- millennium icon. Through Emoji Dick has gotten more than horrible reviews, and is understandably deemed as “useless”, it is nonetheless cool to see just how much of an impact emojis have had on today’s texting culture!