Misleading Emoji Message Lands Couple In Court
Back a few thousand years ago the Ancient Egyptians created a language that was made up of pictures. You're probably familiar with hieroglyphics.
You probably can't read them but you've probably seen the term or are vaguely familiar with the picture writing.
Flash forward to the present day and we are back to the concept of communicating with pictures instead of words thanks to our smartphones. Talk about irony huh? Using massive amounts of technology to communicate the way the written word was communicated centuries ago.
I bet the government was involved.
Today's hieroglyphics are called emojis. These often cute and non-conforming pictures have a language of their own. One Israeli couple found out the hard way that communicating with this emoji language can have the same effect as communicating with the wrong words.
Here's basically what happened. An Israeli landlord had an apartment for rent. An interested couple contacted the landlord suggesting they were very interested in the property based on the emoji language they used. The landlord took this as a sign the couple was, in fact, going to rent the property so he took it off the market.
The couple backed out of the deal and the landlord took them to court and sued them. The judge sided with the landlord because it was determined that "two smileys" indicate that everything is in order.That the message constituted legal intent. Because of that, the court judged the couple to have acted in bad faith.
I guess our lesson for today is this. If you're going to communicate in pictures you better absolutely understand the thoughts those pictures convey. I too learned the hard way when I was mistaken about what the brown swirly smiling face thing was. I thought I was inviting friends over for soft serve chocolate ice cream. I now know why no one accepted my invitation.