Death and the Laughing Face Emoji

It wasn’t minutes after the incorrect online report that a Venezuelan baby was killed, following an “exchange of gunfire” between the Coast Guard and a boatful of “illegal immigrants”, that the laughing face emoji of social media appeared.

The “exchange of gunfire” bit has since disappeared from official reporting, but there is noteworthy, continued insistence on describing people as being as “illegal” as the process employed to take them from one country to another.

Ritually deployed as gratuitous mockery of human distress and suffering, the little yellow grinning, squinting face was initially intended to signify empathic joy or laughter. This is still largely the case, but it has metamorphosed on some platforms.

In 2015, its equally popular variant, the face with tears of joy, became Oxford Dictionary’s first-ever pictograph ‘Word of the Year’.

These two emojis, in particular, have now ironically grown to be the pandemic favourites of COVID-deniers-turned-anti-vaxxers and are currently deployed to signify callous indifference each time official statistics are announced.

Look it up next time you’re on social media. Then click on the culprits and follow a trail virtually guaranteed to find faux religiosity, racism, xenophobia, conspiracies, and pseudo-science.

Meanwhile, in the other world, gloating on human suffering and mocking associated emotions is typically on display through declarations such as “bursting out in laughter” at the tearful announcement of a spike in the number of pandemic deaths by public health officials.

It’s there in the narrative disingenuously distinguishing the anti-mandate campaign from anti-vax advocacy, even on the part of those who are vaccinated “just in case” - in the way agnostics sometimes pray.

So it was that some folks were sniggering and laughing, via emoji, at the death of Ya Elvis Santoyo last Sunday, even as news of a mass return was being absorbed. “They looked for it” would essentially summarise one collective sentiment. “Who tell them come here?”

By the way, it is now confirmed that there was no shootout – contrary to the hair-trigger police template of preliminary press responses.

The Coast Guard media dispatch confirms this, even as it raises technical questions regarding SOPs under such conditions. Hopefully an investigation does not take months or years.

Much of this comes as the focus has turned from the combined impacts of enlightened policy, recognition of international conventions, and rigorous policing of applicable laws, to dogged, exclusive reliance on the latter obligation.

To its credit, the current administration in 2019 introduced the stopgap measure of temporary registration for Venezuelan migrants who had arrived “whether legally or not.” For the most part, this has become one of those permanently temporary interventions born of political paralysis.

The “close the borders” crowd had stood by to jeer and mock and curse prospective beneficiaries when they assembled. It was June 2019. I cannot forget it. I noted who remained silent. Who fanned the flames.

Here was the laughing face emoji on full human display as frightened men, women and children lined up in light rain at night while, on the other side of the road stood the “close the borders” bunch - now more frequently seen at anti-mandate/anti-vax demonstrations mocking the threatened and the dead. Today, they drag empty black coffins past those filled with corpses and draped with real tears.

What the hell have we come to?

And, yes, human emotion is capable of limitless accommodation. We can grieve for Christian Liverpool and Keithisha Cudjoe at the same time as we mourn Ya Elvis. It is possible to lament a lack of water and dangerous pot-holed roads while bemoaning the lack of official diligence on immigration policy and action.

So, a baby is shot by adults with big guns and the laughing face emoji appears. Who remains to say: “Don’t do it!” Whose press conference, full of self-righteous indignation and outrage will address this? Who is there thinking that compassion can buy me votes?

Not those who confer unequal status on “de small islanders and dem”, “de chinee”, “de wonpasent”, “de venes”, “de Ns and the Cs”, “Laventille” and “Caroni” and other racist code worthy of emoji deployment.

Little Ya Elvis was shot and killed. The laughing faces appeared. There are times when civilisations sink beneath the sea and disappear.