(music pulse)
- Scott here for another Headcanon video
this is the first video that I'm actually filming
in the new apartment,
which is why it's just this blank space
without proper lighting of any kind.
I wanted to present this idea to you
that I heard on Twitter.
Again, these Headcannon videos are just videos
that I didn't do any research for,
they're just off the cuff,
there's no script or anything,
it's just a brainstorming session with you guys.
I could be completely wrong here,
I just want to know what you guys think.
On Twitter earlier today,
J. Jacob Barker,
@jojabarker is his username,
tweeted at me and said,
"I've come to consider emoticons as a distant cousin
of sequential art", which is,
sequential art honestly, obviously, meaning comics,
which is something that struck me as really interesting
and actually to follow that up,
Ricky from Stewdippin tweeted at me,
or just tweeted at the whole conversation,
he sent this article that was a list of
50 emoji sequences that are supposed to
spell out movie titles.
You would have something
like a panda and a fist
and then it would be "Kung-Fu Panda"
or a snake emoji and a plane
and that would be "Snakes on a Plane",
or something like a crown, a word bubble, or word balloon
and then a microphone
and that would be "The King's Speech".
That was kind of an interesting thing
because it reminded me a lot
of something I heard about from a Radiolab episode
it's called, I believe it's
"Bliss Symbolics" or "Bliss Symbols",
which were created by a guy named Charles Bliss
who wanted to create a universal language
that didn't necessarily use words.
I'll leave a link in the description
to the whole podcast below so that you can listen to it
because they will explain it more than I could.
The gist is that it's supposed to be
a universal language of symbols.
I have a couple of them here.
This is kind of what the emjoi thing reminded me of.
This would be something like, they would have
individual symbols for different words
and then you combine them to make new words
and this does relate back to comics,
just bare with me for a second here.
This would be animal, long, nose,
and so that would be an animal with a long nose
would be an elephant, right?
That's how you spell elephant.
We have another one here which would be
person, feeling,
positive intensity, I, think.
Sorry I didn't do research.
This would be how you spell out friend.
It's when you use different symbols to spell out,
you combine different symbols together
and it creates a whole new meaning
then what it maybe meant individually on its own.
That's what the emjoi thing reminded me of,
and this idea of creating a universal language
that breaks through barriers of language
is something that's really interesting
because there is a 99% Invisible podcast episode,
I listen to a lot of podcasts,
where they talk about sending a message to people
10,000 years in the future.
Not like sending it through time,
but creating something,
creating a physical thing that people will be able to read
10,000 years into the future.
One thing they had to come across,
well, obviously you can't use language
of a specific language,
because who knows what people are going to speaking
10,000 years into the future.
Words can mean completely different things
as language evolves.
We want to make sure that everybody who comes across it
will be able to understand.
The thing that that they were trying to get across
was this idea that this place would be radioactive,
and it's really hard,
you can't see radiation with the naked eye.
They wanted to create a warning sign
that would be universally understood.
They tried all sorts of different things.
Obviously language and symbols and stuff like that.
One thing that they came across was
this idea of a comic book
type of thing where
you would tell a story through pictures
like the emjoi thing,
or like these Bliss Symbols,
you would tell a story that individually
creates this broader idea
of what the message is that they're trying to get across.
For example, if this place is radioactive,
they would draw a three panel thing
of guy enters the place,
it's a guy walking, a guy enters the place,
and then the guy dies.
They didn't care that they had to spell out
that it was radioactive.
They were just trying to spell out the idea
that if you enter this place you will die.
Then, the problem arose
that when you write out comics,
or when you write out anything that's sequential,
there are different cultures around the world
that read from left to right and right to left.
Obviously, if someone reads it backwards,
because in their culture they read it from ...
Say you write out the comic book left to right
but in their culture they read right to left,
then it looks like if you bring dead people into this place
then they become alive again,
in which case is the opposite of what you want people to do
because then suddenly everybody is coming to this place
and then everybody will just start dying.
This is also something that happened with the
Bliss Symbols as well,
when trying to create a universal language,
there are different cultures that read different ways,
so obviously it's not going to be universal in that sense.
There are going to be different dialects of this type
of symbol language.
I just wanted to throw a ton of stuff out at you
because this is a braining storming session,
these are just a ton of ideas that I want to throw at you
but the main questions, I guess that I had to ask,
are #1,
do you think emoji
is a type of comic,
in the sense that it's a sequential art where you
do picture by picture by picture and it spells out
an entirely different meaning or broader meaning
depending on how you do it.
Secondly, the second question I want to ask,
is do you think that comic books could in a sense,
convey a message 10,000 years in the future,
or just transcend language and stuff all together,
in the sense that you can just tell a story through pictures
that everyone will understand.
That was kind of the point of this system,
was a way to tell stories through pictures
that everybody understands.
I think that's maybe something that comics could also do.
Obviously, one of the big problems they had
with using comics as a way to convey a message
10,000 years in the future is which way do you read it,
so they thought why not try arrows,
but then, who's to say that someone will
interpret those arrows correctly
as a way to read it
instead of an actual literal arrow,
a guy, and then there's an arrow,
there's a lot of problems with it.
Those are just some thoughts.
Again, just a brainstorming session.
Let me know everything that you think
in the description below.
If I'm a crazy person, just let me know
that I'm a crazy person.
I will see you guys next week.
Don't forget to subscribe to the NerdSync channel.
We are currently, if you didn't know this,
we are currently in the process of moving
and revamping everything,
so we're going to be doing a few of these videos
in the middle of the move so that
they're low production value,
that way I don't have to spend a lot of time
and I can spend more time researching for other videos
and also just moving and dealing with the stress
that that has to do.
Thank you guys so much for watching this week.
I'll see you next time for more headcannon videos.
Bye.