Asklemmy

Reddit's popularity came from simplicity. It was a breath of fresh air, after late-90s forum culture, with flat linear threads bloated by signatures and avatars and quotes and blaaah. Nevermind the nested replies - we were so glad to have discussions where the names and words were the only content because the names and words are all that matter.

Emojis fucking ruined that. Emojis make it impossible to have plain text, anymore. Even if we accept they belong in a writing system - can you write yellow? Are you doing multicolor smiley faces, ever? These ugly little fixed icons stick out, which makes people more likely notice them, which makes people more likely to use them. It's a feedback loop that skews things back toward the bad old days of :laughing: :laughing: :smashwithhammer: :spork: (hr) [two paragraphs of boomer-ass one-liners]. On every fucking comment.

That revulsion carried over to lemmy because... it's the same people. We're here because the reddit corporation set its community on fire.

It'd matter a lot less if any browser or website ever defaulted to the symbols being black on white or vice-versa. Even then - there's something deeply distasteful about dealing with people who mistake their facial expressions for a counterargument. I'd much rather be told to fuck off than have some brainless troll spit a bucktooth-and-glasses smiley face, and then do it over and over in the face of any effort to explain why that's just garbage behavior. Concise, verbose, witty, blunt, dry, whimsical, doesn't fucking matter. They've got their "okay, boomer" and they're immune to words. One step above a toddler yelling "no!" at everything. A parasocial version, where other jackasses will come along and upvote them for doing it, while ha ha look at the other guy trying to have a conversation. Post the thought-terminating smug icon again. It'll be even funnier the seventh time.