Emote

For the research project on robotic tutors, see EMOTE (project). For the way of expressing emotions through text art, see Emoticon.

An emote is an entry in a text-based chat client that indicates an action taking place.^[1] Unlike emoticons, they are not text art, and instead describe the action using words or images (similar to emoji).

Overview

In most IRC chat clients, entering the command "/me" will print the user's name followed by whatever text follows. For example, if a user named Joe typed "/me jumps with joy", the client will print this as "Joe jumps with joy" in the chat window.

<Joe> Allow me to demonstrate...
 * Joe jumps with joy again.

In online chatrooms that do not support the "/me" command, it is conventional to read text surrounded by asterisks as if it were emoted. For example, reading "Joe: *jumps with joy*" in a chat log would suggest that the user had intended the words to be performed rather than spoken.^[2]

In MMORPGs with visible avatars, such as EverQuest, Asheron's Call, Second Life and World of Warcraft, certain commands entered through the chat interface will print a predefined /me emote to the chat window and cause the character to animate, and in some cases produce sound effects. For example, entering "/confused" into World of Warcraft's chat interface will play an animation on the user's avatar and print "You are hopelessly confused." in the chat window.^[3]

Emotes are used primarily online in video games and, more recently, on smartphones. Image-based emotes are frequently used in the chat feature of the streaming service Twitch.^[4] Twitch also allows users to upload animated emotes encoded with the GIF format.^[5]

See also

• Emoji