Few things are more annoying than getting an email with a really important-sounding subject line – only to open it and find out it’s complete rubbish.
You panic, hovering over a message from your uncle with the subject “Guess what” – worrying if something horrible has happened, but when you finally click, all you get are get a bunch of low-quality memes that he thinks are dead funny.
One person who has perfected the art of subject lines, though, is the eight-year-old daughter of Twitter user @ChaosMuffet. Her emoji-laden, information-heavy approach means there is no ambiguity whatsoever as to the content or importance of the email.
Just look at them..
The subject line: “Mum can I play on the XBOX 360 please I promise I will not look in Ur drowers [sic]” gets a very clear message across, and the emphatic emoji use – two laughs, two ticks, three sleeping faces, three angels and two cats – only adds to it.
The laughs say “Hey, I’m making a slightly cheeky request, haha”. The ticks say “You should say yes”. The sleeping faces say “You can relax”. The angels say “I am so well-behaved, after all” – and the cats at the end just reinforce the overwhelmingly innocent and pleasant vibe of the request.
The capitalisation of “XBOX 360” is brand appropriate to the console itself, and the rogue capital U on “Ur drowers” draws attention, as if to say “I am not entirely confident about the spelling of this word, so this might require a bit of effort on your part”.
Millions of underwhelming emailers stand to learn a lot from this young girl, who undoubtedly has a bright future ahead of her – charging hefty fees to marketing companies about “messaging”.
Lovely work, smile emoji, smile emoji, tick emoji, cat.