Communication has come a long way, transitioning through different generations and evolving with the times. It has always been in flux, adapting to the needs of its era and the peculiarities of the people involved. With mobile phones, we first spoke. Then we wrote. Then we texted. Now, we’re texting with visual shorthands, which has significantly changed how we interact.

The internet has always been obsessed with mutating. Since the early days of image boards, people have been taking random images of cats, celebrities, cartoons, and poorly cropped photos of people in hilarious situations and repurposing them into reaction images. This evolved into the language of memes as we know them today: GIFs, viral images with text overlays, and now, stickers. The Y2K revival only intensified this remix culture, digging up pop culture artefacts from the late ’90s and early 2000s and giving them a new digital purpose. Old Nollywood films became meme gold, with characters like Osita Iheme (a.k.a. Paw Paw) and Chinedu Ikedieze (Aki) unintentionally providing some of the internet’s funniest reaction images. 

Stickers have become an essential part of digital conversations owing to their richer way of expressing emotions and reactions. It’s not widely known, but they originated in the aftermath of the 2011 tsunami in Japan. LINE, a Korean-developed mobile messaging app, was the first reported platform to introduce stickers. The feature was initially targeted at Japanese users, as stickers were seen as a more effective alternative to regular calls and texts during the country’s strained telecom situation following the disaster. They also served as a substitute for typing out longer messages in Japanese (日本語) which naturally has a complex sentence structure.

Banking on their practicality, LINE made stickers into a revenue stream, generating an average of $10 million monthly sales within the first year of launch according to The Next Web, a Netherland-based tech publication. Their appeal caught on  rapidly, and by 2018, most messaging and social media platforms adopted them, providing users with several advantages, largely for free.  

First is the emotional range and depth that stickers bring to digital conversations. Words can fail even the best writers, and while emojis and emoticons are helpful, they are often limited in scope. Stickers, on the other hand, offer a more expansive way to convey emotions and reactions efficiently. A simple tap on the right sticker can breathe life into a flat exchange and convey the needed sentiment.

Also, using stickers gets better with the fact that they’re mostly not limited in creativity and neither are they confined by the limitations of a keyboard and, in many cases, not even by platform restrictions.

Platforms like WhatsApp have taken this further by allowing users to create custom stickers, making conversations more personal and relevant. Instagram, on the other hand, provides stickers in multiple languages, promoting digital inclusivity across different regions. A heart sticker expresses affection across cultures, a clapping hands sticker conveys appreciation, and a laughing face sticker signals humour, each instantly understood regardless of language or background.

Custom stickers tied to familiar references also help foster more intimate, relatable interactions. In Nigeria, for instance, stickers featuring cultural icons Pawpaw and Aki have become a staple of online conversations, capturing all kinds of reactions uniquely and relatably. 

Additionally, stickers make conversations more fluid. They can help break the ice, soften awkward exchanges, and reduce the risk of sounding blunt. They act as conversational buffers, smoothing over social friction in ways that text alone might be insufficient. 

Stickers aren’t going anywhere. Messaging apps like WhatsApp, Instagram, Snapchat, and iMessage have embraced them fully, and now, entire subcultures exist around collecting and trading them.