I'm a heavy emoji user, texting is such a poor medium for communication, many times people get the wrong message, but with an emoji you'll get an idea of the face I'm making, so less chance of misunderstanding
I noticed that every time I add an emoji to a comment it gets downvoted, so I tested my theory, wrote a comment without an emoji, got upvotes, went back and added an emoji, got downvotes..
On Reddit people use emojis a lot, on Lemmy I NEVER saw anyone use emojis, my account is new but still for the time I spent here, I never saw the use of emojis
So, is it just me, have you noticed this small detail ? and do you miss emojis the way I do ? 😭
I find this really funny. I used reddit for about a decade, and I remember redditors absolutely hating emojis. Reddit really changed, in the time I used it and rarely did it change for the better.
For me personally, it annoys me when emojis are used as a lazy replacement for language and it quickly deteriorates into 🥺🥺😭😭😢😭😭😰😰🙏🙏🙏 sort of bullshit.
In other communication I sometimes throw in a single smiley face because I've been told that middle aged women in particular interpret messages as passive aggressive if I don't.
To me, using default face emoji gives off the same kind of vibe as still having the setting that adds "Sent from my iPhone" to the footers of your emails enabled. Or driving around a car you've purchased with the car dealership branding badges and license plate covers on it. Or using a laptop with all the factory stickers still on it. It signals a kind of "this is fine" lack of care or concern by allowing your own expression to be polluted by pre-canned expressions from a corporation.
Here you have a short list of milquetoast, approved-by-committee standard-issue emotion pictographs. Only the most broadly applicable ones. Perfectly weaponizeable for some airplane food communication by some brand on Twitter or Facebook. And people look at these and go, "Look! That one's sad! I'm sad! These emojis really 'get' me! I'm gonna use them!"
They're expressive, but only in the ways the platform is permitting you to be expressive. A valid counter argument would be, "Some is better than none". But I can't shake feeling like I'm being railroaded into communicating my feelings by approximating them into a small handful of simplified, standardized emotions. And I don't understand how others are satisfied with that.
Emojis only render a specific way on a specific platform, too. So if you're using an emoji that feels like it fits your current emotion because it has a very specific, nuanced look to it, but you're on a platform that doesn't render them the same for every user, you'll unwittingly send a completely different signal than you were intending, as your emoji will become mangled into some slightly different emotion depending on who receives it. The only two ways out of this are either staying inside a platform's walled garden so you only use their standard issue emojis, or you just relegate your communication to being described solely by the broad, vague notions that the emojis represent. Both options are restrictive in ways I dislike.
That isn't to say that I hate emojis, or that I don't think they can be used creatively. Ironically, in my opinion, the best uses of emoji are for when you're using one to communicate any emotion other than the one it was intended for. Exhibit A: how 💀 has almost entirely supplanted 😂 in some circles. Usages like that are communicating more than the sums of their parts in only ways that emoji can achieve, and I find that fascinating. It almost feels like a form of social "recapturing", taking them away from their usual stiff, corporate vibe and making them something transformative.
It only lasts for a time, though. As the mass market clues in on it and starts to cater to it, the novelty disappears. There was a time when 🍑 and 🍆 were clever innuendo. Nowadays there's no joke there. That's just what they mean now. The only ones who think themselves clever or fashionable by using them in that way are doing so in shitty Facebook memes.
The problems I have with emojis mostly only affects the face ones, specifically. The way the human mind is a hyper optimized facial recognition machine amplifies the platform exclusivity problem. Like, you can never have just a smiling emoji. You have to use this platform's smiling emoji, the way they drew it, expressing all the little microdetails they decided to put onto it. And given how complex emotions can be in particular, the inflexibility of a standard set of face emoji to express yourself with feels significantly more restrictive than, say, not being able to find an emoji for some random object.
Just my two cents, though. At the end of the day, if you send a message to someone, they receive it, and they understand exactly what it is you've sent, that's successful communication. Send those emojis with pride if you believe they enrich what you have to express in ways words can't. As long as you're being understood by someone, never let anyone, especially not me, tell you how you should and shouldn't be able to express yourself.
Some of it may be an age thing, in my own case, i dislike emojis because i have no idea what most of them are supposed to mean., including the one at the end of your post. So for older folks like me, they make the post look weird, and can make it more difficult for me to understand what it is that you are trying to communicate.
But i wouldn't actually downvote you for it, im just more likely to ignore your post if it is overflowing with emojis.
its funny reddit used to be extremely anti emoji, there's something about them being feminine coded, something about real men using real words, big manly words, the bigger and the more the manlier, utter your inclinations with the utmost exuberance, kind stranger, for I am a maker of quotes! the narwhal bacons at midnight, pippip cheerio
I was not aware that emoji were suddenly socially acceptable on le reddit
Reddit was at the extreme end of emoji rejection as far as I ever saw. Odd that you experienced differently. I often saw well-upvoted comments such as "downvote due to emoji use" next to heavily downvoted emojis on Reddit.
is the most low effort and stupid type of response. I miss the old days of Reddit where people actually followed reddiquette, and hope that shit doesn't come here.
People get mad because they see hexbear users having fun with emojis instead of writing a bunch of words to say nothing. I spoiler tag my emojis in other Lemmy's as a result.
spoiler
I am being censored by the emoji/civility cop in my head.
I really like them as dumb little "reactions" in chats (as in: emojis other can attach to a message) but, for longer, more thoughtful text posts, they usually distract from the content IME.
I also don't like how they're usually, well I don't know how to describe it but: Overly emotional.
Your crying emoji is a good example; you're not actually crying an ocean because you miss emojis, you're just a little sad about it (I assume).
This "always taking everyting to the extreme" really annoys me about our current society.
There is no moderation anymore; it feels like you must either be extremely happy or extremely sad/angry/whatever.
You can no longer be "a little sad about it", you must show that you're crying a river over it or whatever.
I think that may be one of the reasons why I prefer emoticons. They don't have that problem as much as you can't easily express extreme emotions with them. :'( is about as bad a "crying" usually gets for example and when someone writes xD, you know they're taking a piss.
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 😄 😅 😬 🤓 👍
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
One reason is that they don't translate well depending on the instance. For example, emojis from hexbear are extremely large on lemmy, which irritates some users when a comment section is full of emojis.
Alright, I don't want to sound offensive, but maybe work on your punctuation. You need a lot more periods instead of commas. Maybe that has some relation to it? I don't feel that adding emojis add anything, but especially when it's poorly written I feel like the person either is lazy or doesn't know what they're writting.
A huge amount of emoji use is either a) entirely redundant, and thus just unsightly clutter in the text as it doesn't fit in with any typical fonts, or b) completely lacking in general, shared meaning, such that it fails at being effective communication.
And yeah, there are situations in which they work, but typically it typically only does so in specific subcultures that have a common understanding of what various emoji mean. Because I'm sure you don't consider 💢💢💢 needs correction 💢💢💢 to be a sensible response to your own emoji, but it would be for many people
I think the older generation got used to the stereotype that if people were posting with emojis, they would naturally be making more immature posts (being younger). There are a lot more people from the older generation on the Fediverse.
For an example of this generational gap: you mention that "On Reddit people use emojis a lot" - that genuinely is not the experience on Reddit I had: when I still used Reddit frequently, emojis were treated with the same level of disdain (which both explains and is explained by the condescension around the Emoji Movie).
So you're signalling that you're from a certain generation and looking to appeal to people who are similarly from that generation of people who like to use emojis to express themselves. That's going to attract some people and also going to rub others the wrong way. And that's fine! Keep using your emojis. You just might want to remember that a lot of the people who hated new Reddit and a lot of the people who left Reddit for Lemmy the first time are/were going to be old-timers (by internet standards), so you might find fewer like-minded people here.
As a last note, your saying you "miss emojis" makes me feel extra old (and I don't think I'm old at all!): it suggests that the time of emojis has not only eclipsed the internet culture I'm familiar with but has died out also. That's two eras. It's fortunate that at this current point in time, it seems like digital cultural eras can pass in weeks.
Emojis are a waste to me, my eyesight is not good enough to differentiate whatever the fuck they are supposed to be saying. I don't like to throw around "ists" and "isms" but some people really do have accessibility issues, and emojis are not helpful at all. Too many of them are only reflecting inside jokes and elitism.
Emojis are a terrible method of communication. People have different interpretations of the same faces, and use them to mean different things. On top of that, they render differently depending on which device or service you are using, potentially sending a completely different message than you intended.
Tiny faces are ambiguous and usually don't help clarify a message.
Just use your words, it makes for better communication. Spell out what you mean and there's less room for misunderstanding.
, many times people get the wrong message, but with an emoji you’ll get an idea of the face I’m making, so less chance of misunderstanding
[citation needed]
Several emojis are quite ambiguous in meaning or interpretation, including because of intercultural factors (eg.: U+1F626 FROWNING FACE WITH OPEN MOUTH , or any of the praying / reverence / salute emojis). You, or rather your readers, also have no guarantees that the emoji they are seeing unambiguolsy matches the one you wanted to send and has not been misrepresented in transit or because of the provider (eg.: U+1F52B GUN which was rebranded into WATER PISTOL at different points by different providers).
In comparison, a classic Unicode / ANSI / JIS smiley is basically unambiguous and has two to four extra decades of context.
A simple text, even an acronym, is even better, for example rather than trying to express extreme displeasure at someplace else's lack of good gun control laws with a "prohibition sign" and "gun water pistol", you can use the even simpler text message of "your gun laws are bad".
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)?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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've never noticed this to be honest, and I'm a heavy, heavy emoji user.
Though I prefer the old-fashioned emoji's. I'd love to use ^_^ more, but the constant backslashes make my pinky hurt :)
Anyway, I like using emoji's because I'm a happy person and want to share a friendly smile :)
In moderation they're totally fine, but for me personally it's just faster to type up an emoticon by hand than it is to search through tons of emojis or even use alt codes on Windows.
I don't hate all emojis. I do hate how the vast majority of people use them.
Back when I used Skype, I freaking loved all of them because the animations made it very clear what someone is trying to express in an easy to understand way (assuming everyone in a given chat had a similar culture).
Discord is a not-so-close second. I like a decent chunk of the emojis because they are super expressive while being simple. More importantly, custom emojis allow for incredibly unique ways of expressing ideas that only a small group will understand. It's perfect for inside jokes.
In general, though? Emojis are so freaking bland and inoffensive. 90% of the time that they're used, there's literally 0 reason for them to be used. I don't need a page full of pregnant people and 16 variations of a family because it's nowhere near as effective as saying "I'm pregnant" or "I have 3 siblings." Whoever makes Unicode/these emojis is so hell-bent on inclusivity that they often ignore what makes human inclusivity so important: personality.
As for the people that use them on the daily? The vast majority seem like a hivemind. On YouTube you will literally find pages of "bro [insert incredibly basic observation] 💀😭" in a single comment section. It's one thing if it were a reference to something insane or unhinged like a copypasta, but it's another when it's a subconscious "can I copy your homework" over and over again. People overuse emojis in the same way that people type out "lmao" with a straight face in response to a meme. They're used out of laziness so often that they're becoming filler speech.
I won’t dislike your post, but I generally don’t like it.
What does that emoji at the end of your post mean. Are you physically crying. Is it symbolic to mean you are unhappy or sad or disheartened or something else that I couldn’t think of.
Now imagine if you do a string of those and me trying to figure it out.
I mean with keyboards now, it is probably faster swiping out the phrase :”This saddens me” than that emoji.
I use emoji constantly on other platforms, specifically discord and steam. Like, I basically replace all my sentence-ending punctuation with doofy faces. But I don't like using default unicode emoji, they suck. And I also generally don't feel comfortable using emoji around strangers anyway.