Human facial expressions and other non-verbal communication cues are being replaced by the arrangement of dots on a screen.

Daily Mail:

Full stops intimidate young people when used in social media communication as they are interpreted as a sign of anger, according to linguistic experts.

Teenagers and those in their early twenties, classified as Generation Z, have grown up with smartphones which they use to send short messages without full stops.

And a study from Binghamton University in New York suggested that people who finish messages with full stops are perceived as insincere.

Linguistic experts are now investigating why teens interpret a correctly-punctuated text as a signal of irritation.

The debate was reignited after writer Rhiannon Cosslett tweeted: ‘Older people – do you realise that ending a sentence with a full stop comes across as sort of abrupt and unfriendly to younger people in an email/chat? Genuinely curious.’

Several Twitter users expressed disbelief, and, despite her own use of a full stop, one even accused her of ‘peak snowflakery’.

That prompted crime novelist Sophie Hannah to reply: ‘Just asked 16-year-old son – apparently this is true. If he got a message with full stops at the end of sentences he’d think the sender was “weird, mean or too blunt“.’

According to experts, youngsters used to communicating electronically break up their thoughts by sending each one as a separate message, rather than using a full stop, which they use only to signal they are annoyed or irritated.

Some have said the full stop is redundant when used in texting because the message is ended just by sending it.

According to The Telegraph, Linguist Dr Lauren Fonteyn of Leiden University in Holland, tweeted: ‘If you send a text message without a full stop, it’s already obvious that you’ve concluded the message.

‘So if you add that additional marker for completion, they will read something into it and it tends to be a falling intonation or negative tone.’

A linguist from the University of Cambridge, Owen McArdle, told the newspaper: ‘I’m not sure I agree about emails. I guess it ­depends how formal they are.

‘But full stops are, in my experience, very much the exception and not the norm in [young people’s] instant messages, and have a new role in signifying an abrupt or angry tone of voice.’

And the potential change in meaning of the full stop, in relation to online communication, has been debated by linguists for years.

Professor David Crystal, one of the world’s leading language experts, argues that the usage of full stops is being ‘revised in a really fundamental way’.

In his book, Making a Point, he says that the punctuation mark has become an ’emotion marker’ which alerts the recipient that the sender is angry or annoyed.

He wrote: ‘You look at the internet or any instant messaging exchange – anything that is a fast dialogue taking place. People simply do not put full stops in, unless they want to make a point.

The full stop is now being used in those circumstances as an emotion marker.’

Perhaps technology was a mistake and we should be watching people’s faces and listening to people’s voices to figure out their emotions instead of reading too much into whether they respect proper grammar in instant messages or not. The fact that people automatically and subconsciously look for emotion markers in text exposes the need for face-to-face communication.

But it’s 2020 and we’re living in some kind of science fiction dystopia where the government can do anything “because of the virus,” and people are adapting to a lifestyle of complete social isolation.

Punctuation marks are the closest to markers for human emotion that you’re going to see.

So now you can makes faces at the people you troll.

This is actually a pretty interesting step forward in information technology, even though it’s only being used for a game at this point. But we need some kind of working alternative to doing video chats.

Video streaming is a disaster. It always lags and stutters, the video invariably looks grainy and low-res, and you have to have freaking studio lighting in your room to try an make it halfway decent.

Having systems where only your facial expression data is sent over the wires and a high-definition 3D model of your face is rendered on the other end would be way more efficient than sending full-motion video, and it would look better, ultimately.

Tom’s Hardware:

Cloud Imperium Games announced that it adopted Faceware Technologies’ real-time, player-driven facial animation technology to bring your real facial expressions and movements into Star Citizen to add a new level of immersion and realism to the game.

Faceware’s facial animation motion capture solution is widely used in the video game development industry for capturing facial animation for scripted NPC characters, but the company wants to extend that capability to offer more realism in player-to-player interactions. Faceware recently released the Faceware LiveSKD, which allows developers to enable real-time, player-driven facial animations in their player avatars.

Actually, I desperately do.

Cloud Imperium Games is the first developer to announce that it’s leveraging the technology for a game.

“This is the first time any game has used this kind of technology to detect and stream the facial movements of players in real-time, and I believe it’s a revolutionary step in gaming,” said Chris Roberts, chairman, and CEO of Cloud Imperium Games. “For the first time, we’ll be able to deliver the full range of human emotion, not just voice. Our players’ facial expressions will be translated onto their avatars’ face. Combine that with a player’s voice correctly positioned in the virtual world, and you have the most lifelike player-to-player communication ever.”

The technology will allow fat women to pretend to be Black men. Progress!

I’m thinking this technology could be coupled with “augmented reality” goggles soon enough in order to create full 3d representations of people in our environment, with realistic faces and expressions, combined with real-time voice chat.

Kind of like this, but with better acting and plot.