Microprocessing
Memoji Are Apple’s Greatest Invention Since the iPhone
The digital avatars are adorable — and an important form of expression
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When I was about 10 years old, I loved American Girl. I read nearly all the historical books that were released alongside the dolls; Felicity, the spunky, freckled redhead from the Revolutionary War era, was my favorite, perhaps because she wasn’t a four-eyed nerd like Molly (I was a four-eyed nerd like Molly). While my parents were happy to supply me with as many American Girl books as I wanted, they refused to pony up $100 for either the Felicity doll or what I wanted just as much — the customizable Truly Me dolls, which allowed children to choose eye color, skin tone, and hair color to match their own. My daydreams of a mini me with brown hair, hazel eyes, and a cool, rebellious wardrobe sadly never came to fruition.
Now, two decades later, I finally have the digital equivalent of the Truly Me dolls: Memoji stickers. Basically a more refined version of Bitmoji, the stickers were widely released in sticker form this September as part of Apple’s iOS 13 update. Though I’ve been ambivalent about Apple products for some time now (I replaced my 2015 MacBook with a Dell a few weeks ago), I’m back in, at least on the iPhone front, with the glory that is my adorable Memoji.
It’s my hope that more iPhone users give birth to their own Memoji, because they’re expressive, adorable, and beneficial to your digital communication. And unlike Bitmoji, the comparatively hideous custom emoji sticker company owned by Snapchat, Memoji are integrated into the iOS ecosystem. This allows users to easily add their Memoji as their iMessage avatar, which is then shared with all iMessage contacts when texting.
Elena Nicolaou, an entertainment writer at Refinery29, is the only person I know who approaches their Memoji with a level of joy that approaches mine. “I love her and show her off all the time,” she says. Elena used to be a big fan of the Sims and Neopets, and her love of Memoji fits right into that. “It’s fitting to have an image representation of the ‘self’ that navigates this other plane... she’s smoothed out me. She’s rich-girl face me.”
