Today is an era of online communication. Everything is being done today through online medium, so why not chat. To make online chat possible, several applications and messengers have been introduced, with Facebook, Whatsapp, Hike and WeChat being the popular ones. When they were first launched, they had only the basic feature of sending and receiving text messages. But gradually, voice/video chat also became popular though these messengers, and text messaging got advanced with the introduction of ‘stickers’.
Although it’s quite strange, but if there exist people who are not aware of this term, let me explain it to them first. In the world of online chat, ‘stickers’ refer to those images/animations that depict a certain emotion or message. Plenty of stickers are available today on all these online platforms. No doubt that they have made chat more interesting and expressive, but if we look deeply, some valid arguments can be thought of to support the notion that the use of these stickers while chatting online is not always beneficial and amusing.
1. Words Matter More
It’s right that action matters more than words, but when it comes to choose between words and stickers in online chat, undoubtedly words matter more than stickers. It’s not like stickers are totally worthless, but a quality chat where both the parties get to know about each other’s actual emotion is done through words. Of course stickers can be used in between, but solely using them isn’t a good idea. When two lovers chat online, they usually use stickers showing hug and kiss, but if one of them just keeps using stickers to convey each and every feeling rather than expressing his/her love through words, the other person will not be able to like it for long. Using only stickers usually gives an impression to the other person that you are not interested to talk, because using words requires thinking and effort more than that needed while sending stickers.
2. A Chain of Messages Gets Created Involving Only Stickers
Yes, stickers are addictive. If one sends a sticker, the other person feels a kind of compulsion to reply with a sticker only. In this way, both the sides keep on exchanging them and they do not even feel tired as sending a sticker is a matter of a single click only. Consequently, a chat that could have ended in 5 minutes with sufficient exchange of information/feelings now ends up in over double the time.
3. Consume More Data
Well, this will surely concern many. As compared to text, stickers require more amount of data and hence, excessive use of them will definitely cost you more. Moreover, if you are on a 2G connection, sending and receiving these stickers isn’t as fast as is the case with text messages. Sometimes, due to the slow net speed, they do not load only on the receiver’s side due to which he/she is left clueless and often irritated as well. If you want to put in less effort in chat by using this new invention of mankind, nobody will stop you but do this only if you are cool with your data pack vanishing at a faster rate.
