Asklemmy

They do? 😶

I find usage in posted content to be generally very low, although I agree that if used in a supportive manner they help a lot to differentiate various ways a sentence can be interpreted.

Why do you even give a shit?
Use as many or as few emojis as you like, why waste your time and energy caring about some imaginary internet points (or worse - if some random stranger likes or doesn't like emojis)?

If you need to use emojis to convey feeling, emotion, or to emphasize your point-

You need to learn more words.

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.

Back in the day there was an advertisement for Infocom that said "A picture is worth a thousand words, we'd rather give you the thousand words"

I love emojis too :))

I need to get an emoji keyboard for my computer, because I feel so rude whenever I can't type '😅' or another fitting emoji 😅

🫣

A few emojis are okay. That meme spam of putting one every two words or so is a waste of screen space.

Also what everyone else said: they are different everywhere so the meaning gets lost. Twitch emotes work for conveying meaning well because they look the same for everyone.

My guess is the crowd here are less emotionally focused and more into STEM for a lack of a better term.

I think it's down to not wanting to be told how to feel about something, for me at least.

In addition to that most emojis diaplay really exaggerated emotions, so they're not even depicting OP's feelings that accurately.

I personally just think they are absolutely dumb compared to emoticons. I won't downvote a post/comment solely because of them, but I still think they're dumb.

😎 👉👉

We've come a long way from cave drawings and hieroglyphics. We've developed languages capable of expressing tiny details in amazing clarity; succinctly, pointedly, and without confusion as to their meaning.

And yet there is a whole new wave of people unable to use those languages correctly or even rudimentarily who drag civilization backwards by returning to hieroglyphics.

I'm almost of the opinion we've reached "peak human" and are now backsliding. Yes, of course it's self inflicted - how else could we as a species do an 'about face' and head back to cave dwelling? However it happens and whomever is responsible, here we are... and we're losing ground fast.

And things like emojis are leading the charge.

Despite having more emojis than most lemmy instances, I still rarely use them myself, but that's mostly because they're not intuitively built in to the reply/post UI/flow. You can get to them, but it's a bif of an effort 🤷‍♀️

i use text ones like ^_^ and :3

but i also love blobcats

and blobfoxes too!

I don’t like them because they can often be hard to see. There are so many of them now, and navigating them (for me) isn’t always easy.

I like the simple text based approach. Emojis invade every other aspect of online communication; it’s nice to have a place where I don’t feel pressured to insert them, especially for someone whose eyesight isn’t the best.

That’s just my rationale, but I can’t speak for everyone.

¯_(ツ)_/¯

🤓 elitism

I don't like emojis and never used them on purpose, just a few times before I found a setting to prevent the auto-replacement function in other apps. I kinda prefer pure text, couldn't tell you why. Maybe because they distract the eye too much. But for the same reason I dislike profile pictures, awards and gif/image reactions.