#BIG THUMBS UP PROFESSIONAL#

When the recliner was brought to an upright position, her thumb was caught in the chair’s mechanism and cut off,” says Grunewald. “Anistasia was asleep, cuddling on her grandma’s chest. Anistasia’s left thumb had been severed in a recliner chair. Carlsen giving thumbs upĪnistasia Smith and her mother, Bridgette Grunewald, give a big thumbs-up to Brian Carlsen, M.D., and the team at Mayo Clinic who cared for the then 4-year-old in February 2011. To which the only appropriate response is… well, the grimace emoji.Anistasia and Dr. Not strictly because of its impact on relations with Holohan, but mainly because he is very likely to see an awful lot of them on his Twitter feed from here on in. There’s a very good chance that Donnelly will rue the day he relied on the most pass-agg of all of the emojis to do the talking for him. In any case, the whole fandango somehow reminds me of David Cameron's smartphone blunder, where he reportedly believed the acronym LOL to mean 'lots of love', and splashed it about liberally, most notably in texts to former tabloid editors. The raised-hand emoji is never to be used, including and especially if you work within sniffing distance of the Dáil. The dead emoji (two Xs for eyes) is meant to express shock. They may be one character on your phone or keyboard, but they are loaded with meaning (oftentimes, multiple meanings, depending on the context).įor future reference, the folded hands emoji denotes praying, not a high-five. If you bandy about emojis in your conversations, just be aware of their not-inconsiderable might. Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly: Did he mean to give the CMO the brush-off? Photograph: Julien Behal (People in the United States are thought to send around 96 each a day).īut, as with Gifs, if you are going to let an emoji – any emoji – do the grunt work for you in a conversation, you’d really better know what you’re getting yourself into. Now that we are all social distancing and staring into our phones, tone of voice and body language have been swept aside, for the ease of the emoji.Īccording to a study by Swyft media, more than six billion emojis are sent around the world every day. We are living in strange and different and, yes, unprecedented times. (Were they trying to say, 'Yes, you're still talking, but we're not really listening?' I suppose you'd have to ask them.) After Donnelly tweeted yesterday about Ireland's progress on the vaccine front, thousands of people simply replied with a single thumbs-up emoji. In fact – look, people are bored – a meme appears to have been born. When the exchange was reported over the weekend, in the Sunday Independent, Donnelly's wayward emoji use didn't go unnoticed. Whatever his inner thoughts or motives, news of the exchange is doing nothing to dispel the niggling sense some have that Donnelly's personal brand runs towards the smug and the snarky. If you are going to let an emoji – any emoji – do the grunt work for you in a conversation, you'd really better know what you're getting yourself into

#BIG THUMBS UP PROFESSIONAL#

Did Donnelly really mean to give the CMO the brush-off? Is he a simply a busy man for whom brevity is key? Did he realise in the moment that this was an inappropriate response to a professional correspondence? Or is he just hopelessly out of touch with the nebulous contexts of each emoji? Let’s pause this scene for a moment, and step outside it, Matrix-style. When Holohan reiterated the seriousness of the situation some days later, texting Donnelly that the “R” number in Dublin had increased (not exactly good news), Donnelly replied with a single thumbs-up emoji. (Donnelly had said on radio that transmission was slowing in Dublin and that the outlook appeared “positive”). On October 12th the Chief Medical Officer, Dr Tony Holohan, texted Donnelly to say that the number of Covid-19 cases in Dublin was on the rise and to advise him to be cautious in public messages about the virus in the capital.

Big thumbs up