“Coming soon: my own emojis. Mostly pretty nice, but some ... ” – Shane “Warnie” Warne pauses and leans into the camera. His eyes become visible for the first time; his brows reach for his hairline. His tone – jocular, even sing-song – drops to a conspiratorial whisper.

“ ... ARE VERY NAUGHTY.”

With a wheezing, almost noiseless bray of a laugh, he reels back from the camera, all the while maintaining eye contact as the “catalogue” of his coming wares ascends to cover his face.

Shane Warne (@ShaneWarne) Excited to say #WarnieMojis will launch in the next few weeks. Head to https://t.co/SdVOXdrsrB #naughtyandnice pic.twitter.com/hgpqViTIG1

The clip, posted to the Australian former international cricketer’s social media presences on Sunday evening, is remarkable for the sense of impending dread it manages to evoke in just nine seconds.

WarnieMojis – enabled by Starmojis, which describes itself as a key merchant of the “emoji revolution” by way of its “best valued Apps” – “allows” users to communicate “using Warnie-inspired expressions”.

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With the app due to launch in the coming weeks, we have yet to see the full range of “hundreds of unique and exclusive emoji, which have been personally overseen by Warnie himself”.

But from the rubbery rendition of his face put forward to promote them, it’s clear that with WarnieMojis will come a hundred different ways to say: “I’m afraid I’m becoming irrelevant.” (And hopefully one for: “We started from aliens/”)

It’s not strictly true that, as his Wikipedia page claims, Warnie “officially retired from all formats in July 2013”. These days he has traded pitches for platforms, and seems to be just as present in collective consciousness as he ever was during his cricketing career.

A stint on I’m a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here drew the desired headlines when he cast doubt on Darwin’s theory of natural selection, then stuck his head into a Perspex tank of snakes.

And now the Sydney Daily Telegraph reports that Channel Seven is close to finalising a deal for a mini-series about his love life, pending a Screen Australia funding decision this week, presumably dependant on how Tinder and excessive reliance on text messages might translate to the small screen.

Now, with WarnieMojis, Warne has thrown himself wholeheartedly into a game that only Kim Kardashian is winning. The influence of her bespoke Kimoji app is obvious in Starmojis’ “vision” but its enormous success is unlikely to translate.

At its peak, Kimoji – available for iPhone and Android for US $1.99 – was reportedly downloaded 9,000 times a millisecond after its launch on 21 December 2015, crashing Apple’s App Store. A range of inspired merchandise, including wrapping paper and phone cases, was released in June.

Sadder than the promise of “the official Shane Warne Meme Maker” was the lacklustre response it raised: a measly 40 retweets out of nearly 2.8 million Twitter followers, 494 likes from more than 779,00 Facebook fans.

Though the two have similar approaches, such as posting old, more flattering photos to Instagram as though they’re recent, there’s a marked difference in demand for what they’re selling.

With Kimoji, Kardashian monetised the pre-existing impulse of the internet to use images of her face and family to communicate online. A search for “Kardashian” gifs yields close to 14,000 results, one for every occasion – even “Stop taking pictures of yourself, your sister’s going to jail”.

By contrast, there seems to be little interest in WarnieMojis, even among people who care enough about the former cricketer to keep up with his thirst-follows on social media.

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But these are the implicit demands placed on celebrities today – be active, be available, be present on every platform – even of the man who has taken more Test wickets than any other Australian. Doubtless that’s why he’s on Instagram liking selfies of 25-year-old models.

As Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” baseball cap has become symbolic of the broken state of democracy and race relations in the US, WarnieMojis could become the smallest unit of a culture that demands slavish attention to self-promotion and personal brand – a one-click communique to say, “This is how bad it’s got.”

Or it could be, as Warne said, simply in the interests of #fun. God knows, he’s always on the lookout for ways to maximise his text game – why use a thumbs-up to say you’ve “got the hint” when only a cartoon of your own apologetic face will do?