Asklemmy

We use them all the time on

Reddit had a whole thing about looking down on emojis for whatever reason. But during the influx over the summer there was a discussion here somewhere about whether we were going to keep that attitude going here, and the general consensus was no because it's ridiculous.

We've been using emojis and their earlier equivalents to help clarify meaning and intent (as well as for humour, obviously) for as long as I've been on the internet, which means they've been in common use since at least the mid-to-late 90s. I use them all the time, all over Lemmy and Mastodon, and haven't had anyone comment on it or call it out (except once but that was in a positive way).

It's possible different communities have different attitudes, but unless you're using them in an inappropriate way I expect the downvote thing is more of a coincidence (or possibly one person with a weird anti-emoji vendetta, we all know there are weird folks out there) rather than a site-wide culture thing.

p.s. just realised I got through a whole post without any of the things for once so here's a few of my most often used just to brighten things up 😄 😅 😬 🤓 👍

This isn't like Reddit, which is full of elite snobs thinking they are better than others.

Emojis help communicating. I'm convinced it is the part written language has been missing since the dawn of writing.

It is the difference between:

"You are so amazing 😄"

and

"You are so amazing 🙄 "

It's annoying if someone sends only a single emoji like 😂. Like I don't need your reaction I need your WORDS OF WISDOM (discussion). Especially on a public forum.

Semi-related, but does any one else feel creeped out by the basic smiley emoji? 🙂

The cold dead eyes peer into my soul with judgement. That's why I always use a different smiling emoji ☺️

On the contrary, I've hardly seen emojis on Reddit while here they appear a lot more frequently.

It might be an issue of the crowd you flock with? I haven't seen emoji hatred on Lemmy, in fact I recall more support for it.

The only occasions where it's frowned upon is when they are overused, it can be tiring to read a text littered with an emoji every four words.

I have nothing against moderate emoji use that accompanies coherent text, but I disagree that texting is a poor medium for communication. We've been effectively writing for thousands of years. It's a skill that can be difficult for some people, and can take practice to become good at, but that doesn't make it a bad medium.

Ppl on Lemmy are all old techies who if forced to use emoji would rather type out ;( than use emojis.

When people use emojis it makes me feel angry.

😠

Using one emoji is fine. Using several, or repeating the same one over and over, is a sign of a demented mind.

Mostly I hate emojis because the majority of posts with them are shitposts.

Overuse of the things looks trashy or spammy.

Think of some eyesore of a boomer facebook post with 97 different fonts and colours and styles.

Think of emojipasta and cummies

And then you get people who follow up all their nouns with little pictures of the object in question, and just why.

What do you want for dinner? I was thinking of ordering a pizza [picture of pizza]

It's potentially vague without the little picture, and utterly redundant with it. It never helps.

Sure, the occasional :) or something in shortform text can be appropriate for the register, but it's very context sensitive - and the tone conveyed by most of the graphic emoji just makes me want to punch people. Again, they look like those horrible facebook avatar things, or assets from shitty freemium mobile games.

🤷

It gives me power

I question this post because no one seems to agree with you that reddit is a welcome place for emojis... They are rare there and tend to get downvoted

I think most people don't mind the use of emojis, it's the abuse they don't like. Spamming 😭😭😭😭 is annoying.

When used sparingly and to convey a specific emotion that wouldn't translate well only using text they're useful.

I feel like most people (assuming you're not on Reddit) don't really care, so long as you're not being spammy with them (or not just reply with only an emoji).

Every now and then I'll tack one on at the end of a comment if I think that my tone might come of a bit more passive aggressive than I intended it to be, but most of the time I just see it as "I might need to rewrite this so that it doesn't come off that way" instead.

I'm mentally old and out of touch with the kids, there are new emojis all the time and I have no idea what any of them mean. I spent all this time learning English and now half of the things people post are some sort of picture puzzle I lack the context to understand and have to guess the meaning of.

As far as I can tell, it's because Hexbear likes using them