Speaking of modern forms of communication…

What does this symbol mean to you?

I ask because when I use it to respond to a text, my phone will tell me “You liked…” whatever I was responding to.

Is that how you would translate this nonverbal communication into words? That seems to me to reflect a very limited understanding of the symbol and its vast usefulness.

Sure, it can mean “like,” in certain circumstances. But if that’s what I need it for, I can just type “I like it!” easily enough. Nevertheless, I do use it for that quite frequently, and it works in the right context. I see others doing the same.

But to my point, it is far more valuable and essential for saying something that words can’t say — or can’t say without hurting feelings. To express it briefly in words, it’s something like one or more of the following:

• “Check!”
• “Got it!”
• “Received!”
• “10-4!”
• “Roger!”

Or, at greater length:

• “OK, you’ve sent it and I’ve seen it, and I have nothing to say about it, and certainly no value judgments to make regarding your important missive. So, with all due respect, please go away without asking further about it, so I can try desperately to dig my way out of this mountain of actual, important work I need to do…”

Employed that way, it is enormously useful.

I learned this almost immediately after joining James Smith’s gubernatorial campaign in 2018. From the first day, I was hit by a tsunami of texts that went exponentially beyond anything I had seen or imagined before. I don’t know quite how to fully convey the quantity I mean. I could easily have done nothing but read and answer texts all day long, and still not do full justice to the task. And I had a universe of other things to do, as a more or less one-man communications department in the last months of a statewide campaign.

It was immediately as horrible as email, but more immediately demanding, since most people know it’s crazy to expect a prompt reply to an email. When you got one of those back in the ’90s, you were excited. Not anymore.

Part of this was that for the most part, James and running mate Mandy Powers Norrell communicated only by text. Sure, there was the occasional phone call while they flitted daily across the state, but no emails — which sort of drove our campaign manager nuts. He’d never encountered anything like it, and his campaign experience was much greater than mine (which is to say, he’d served in a bunch of them, and I’d been in zero).

But our two principals texting all the time would have been tolerable had that been for all the other people that constantly peppered me with information and observations that seemed to them critically valuable at that moment. I’m talking about not only fellow campaign staffers, but friends and contributors and well-wishers from across the state and beyond.

Worse, it wasn’t just individuals. There was also that cruelest invention of the 21st century — the GROUP TEXT! The kind that just keeps coming at you, with multiple responses from various recipients, all day long. The emoji was magnificently effective with these. It said, with all due politeness, “Acknowledged.” But it gave no one anything to respond to, so no one noticed when I removed myself from the group.

Finding that mode of communication was, for me at that moment, as wonderful as finding a cure for the common cold. I’ve used it that way many times since. Not to be rude or dismissive — just to get on with what I need to do, without hurting feelings.

So what does it mean to you? Or perhaps I should say, in what way is it most useful to you?…

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