It feels immature and cringe but that’s probably only 'cause I’m “old”.

I grew up with emoticons and find the colorful nature of them quite disruptive… but that might just be me *shrug*

Because I’m a millennial semi-luddite who (typically) prefers emoticons.*

*Contrary to popular opinion, emoticons ≠ emoji. :) is an emoticon, while 🙂 is an emoji. (Sorry, this is a pet peeve of mine. Lol.)

Emojis to me are like a strongly flavored seasoning. It’s only appropriate in specific contexts, and even in those contexts, just a pinch goes a long way. Too much and it can detract from the experience.

Emojipasta is grossly overseasoned food. But that’s the point, obviously. It’s the emoji version of those white women on Tiktok who throw three pounds of ground beef wrapped around an entire block of cheese in a baking sheet full of milk and bake it in the oven for rage clicks.

Me, personally, I usually don’t need emoji seasoning. I’m fine with it plain. Besides, most emojis to me have all the class of drowning your entire meal in ranch dressing. There are a very small handful of exceptions. But that’s just my lame opinion.

And of the ones I do find theoretically useful, I’m always hesitant to use them, because emoji rendering is platform specific. They’re not quite like text, where the glyphs are entirely utilitarian and typeface it’s written in conveys little to no information. But with emojis, the subleties pile up. A thinking emoji rendered on a Windows PC isn’t quite the same as a thinking emoji on an iPhone, or various kinds of Android phones. Unless I’m on a platform like Twitter or Discord that forces all clients to use a single emoji set, I can never confidently send a precise emotion with an emoji.

Platforms like Discord that let you create your own emojis instead of using the comparatively sterile, corporate-approved, general purpose set provided in standard Unicode is another story. I like those and use them extensively. If Lemmy natively supported a Discord-esque system where instances or communities could define custom emojis that didn’t rely on custom clients, plugins, or instance-specific rendering hacks, I’d use them all the time. Though this would, I presume, be to the extreme chagrin of many.

One thing I really hate is when people use that clap emoji between every word to try to solidify what they’re saying.

Doing that, or saying “full stop”, etc. doesn’t make me trust what you’re saying more. Explain why what you’re saying is correct. Use words, logic, and sources.

Excessive emojis make reading difficult. It’s just as bad as posts. That. Are. Written. Like. This. My internal voice pauses for ever period, likewise, I have to interpret every inline emoji. It’s mentally tiring, and while forums like this aren’t formal, when I see abused emoji use, I instinctively write off a comment or post as juvenile and low quality. I’m more inclined to skip reading it entirely because of the extra effort required and my pre judgement of its contents.

Tagging an emoji to the end or light use to help convey emotions is fine and intuitive. I personally like them for quick response and like you, to add a little more context to text where the “voice” may be missed.

My dyslexic brain gets upset with this mid-sentence emoji usage. Takes much more time and effort to read and interpret.

A single emoji at the end of a post never hurt anybody 🤫

Because, emojis, breakup, the, flow, of, a, sentence, like, a, comma. Using too, many, makes, it, sound, like, you, are, straining, to 💩.

I interpret someone using that many as an idiot

I think of them like swear words. Not on-the-internet swearing, but public swearing. To use their full power, words like “fuck” need context and - more importantly - discretion and frugal usage.

Overuse of emojis is even easier and harder to look at. But when used right, they serve a purpose. Otherwise it’s “Why the fuck do users fucking dislike the fucking use of emojis on fucking Lemmy?”

🤷🏽‍♂️

You only speak one language in a sentence right? How often do you switch between languages in a single sentence?

Emoji are pictograms the same as east Asian languages are pictograms.

Because this isn’t a Spot The Dog book, and we don’t need little picture of all the nouns.

On their own they’re ambiguous and vague; with the matching word they’re completely redundant.

What good does it do to say “I had pizza [little picture of pizza] for lunch”?

I’ll use the occasional :) or such as befits the tone, but pointless hieroglyphics are pointless and annoying.

Man, yall emoji hatin’ MF’ERs are gross.

🤮