Why do Lemmy users rarely use emoticons?

While I get what you're saying and I think sometimes emojis can absolutely be overused or used in place of textual clarification, I feel they also serve as an effective substitute for a lack of non-verbal communication. Generally speaking, "what people say" is only half the story, and "how they say it" (the nuances of facial/bodily expressions, tone of voice, etc) is the other half.

When writing narratives, we get away from this by means of, well, narration. "... he said, cheerfully"; "... he replied, with just a twinge of annoyance to his voice"; "she said, while averting her eyes".

In first person communications like social media, we don't really have an effective way to communicate that sort of nuance. We do have action asterisks shudders in horror, shorthand expressions to represent actions like LOL, and emoji 🤷‍♂️ as potential alternatives, as well as some community-driven linguistic nuance like Reddit's usage of "/s" to indicate sarcasm.

We could also go all old-timey letter writing and say things like "while I find myself hesitant to reply to you in fear that you will consider it an attack, I do find myself with some concerns in regards to your comment and will elaborate below. I hope that you will not take these concerns as dismissive of your opinion in any way, as I simply mean to clarify some doubts and seek your own opinion on my thoughts as presented above." (This might be an example of "overly eloquent" and there is probably a happy medium.)

I find the ever-evolving linguistics of internet communication to be really fascinating, if you can't tell!

What if you tried to express your emotional attitude to the person you are talking to? Or try to describe how you feel when you have had a good day.

I don't always do it well in text messages and then I use emoticons to reflect emotion.