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[Nightdrift]

There was a time I thought they were silly, particularly because I didn't like texting and that happened to be the medium where I first really began to encounter them. When emojis became more prevalent online, I had been mildly irked -- but this is also coming from a tryhard who felt there was more fun in having limitations to creating emoticons and using what characters were available (that said, discovering kaomojis was a mindblowing moment).

Nowadays, I think emojis are pretty great -- I would say 90% of my site graphics were built using emoji artwork. I wish there was more functionality to download or create your own emoji packs/versions of emojis in the default messengers (I don't think that's a thing as far as I am aware...but if it is, please make my day!). There is also a small part of me that wishes there was an option for emojis to have more of the style of unicode text presentation ⛐ I think there's something fun about the simple, graphic nature of those.

What are your thoughts about emojis? Great? Not so great? Any features you wish they had or wouldn't have?

[cinni]

im a bit biased because i was a hardcore user of text emoticons like :-) or xD or T_T or even better kaomojis like (⌒▽⌒)☆! i definitely still prefer to use :-) over a smiley emoji, but that's because it conveys a totally different ~feeling~ yknow? i'm not against emojis and i really like them at times (i love some of the forum emojis like OR THE BEST ONE ), BUT the wrong set of emojis will turn me off :-(

side note: i wish emojis could be more easily toggled off in some clients, cuz soo many times i type :-o and it turns into 😮‍ when i really meant ":-o"... >:-(

[Cobra!]

I 100% agree with you. I used to think emojis were some stupid trend by heavy social media users, but then I've seen people do some pretty creative things with it, such as using it for URLs, using them on Gemini as a way to give Capsules more decoration, and even an entire conlang being made from them! It's really cool, actually!

[Nightdrift]

I 100% agree with you. I used to think emojis were some stupid trend by heavy social media users, but then I've seen people do some pretty creative things with it, such as using it for URLs, using them on Gemini as a way to give Capsules more decoration, and even an entire conlang being made from them! It's really cool, actually!

Had no clue about the conlang part, that's incredible! Definitely going to check that out.

im a bit biased because i was a hardcore user of text emoticons like :-) or xD or T_T or even better kaomojis like (⌒▽⌒)☆! i definitely still prefer to use :-) over a smiley emoji, but that's because it conveys a totally different ~feeling~ yknow? i'm not against emojis and i really like them at times (i love some of the forum emojis like OR THE BEST ONE ), BUT the wrong set of emojis will turn me off :-(
side note: i wish emojis could be more easily toggled off in some clients, cuz soo many times i type :-o and it turns into 😮‍ when i really meant ":-o"... >:-(

Oh man. It is always frustrating when an emoticon turns into an emoji, this is not what the people (me) wanted! I do agree with the completely different feel of emoticons vs emojis. :3 and XD are the OGs in my heart.

I do like that forums offer custom emojis; the ones here are really great and full of personality.

[Melooon]

Its such a changing language, In the 2006 era, noseless faces were very hip, you were crusty and old if you put a nose like :-) in your text. Then there were forum ones that sometimes kinda worked, and other times were a bit weird, but it was different everywhere. I'm not sure how I feel about xD, it reminds me too much of being 15 xD

My first experience of modern emoji was using an app that only let you type in emoji (but you had to manually install an emoji keyboard because they didn't exist yet) and there was the whole conflict with emoji looking quite different on iPhone and Android and not working on desktop.

For a while I kinda avoided them, because I figured that everything you wanna say should be sayable with text BUT now I think that's just not true, the way we communicate has changed so much in the last 50 years, and emoji are just one more tool that fill a gap that was missing from short form text.

Also we've come full circle, nose faces are very hip and cool now, although I'm particularly fond of pointy noses :^]

or even better kaomojis like (⌒▽⌒)☆

How do people think these up! Its such an abstractly complicated thing to try and create a face out of text like this

[Kutan]

I'm still not the biggest fan of emojis. I'm not put off by them, but I don't really use them. There's definitely something weird about it being non-standardized; when you're trying to communicate nuance in text using an emoji expression, it's kind of worrying knowing it'll look different depending on your device. If you take a peek at emojipedia, you can see that holy moly, they show up a lot of different ways!

I do think non-expressive emojis for making pictographs are neat, though! For example, if I want to say something like "you can let the cat in the house, but not the dog," I can very quickly make something like 🏠⬅️🐈✅🐕❌, and that can be communicated to anyone regardless of language. Really useful!

[Nightdrift]

I'm still not the biggest fan of emojis. I'm not put off by them, but I don't really use them. There's definitely something weird about it being non-standardized; when you're trying to communicate nuance in text using an emoji expression, it's kind of worrying knowing it'll look different depending on your device. If you take a peek at emojipedia, you can see that holy moly, they show up a lot of different ways!

I do think non-expressive emojis for making pictographs are neat, though! For example, if I want to say something like "you can let the cat in the house, but not the dog," I can very quickly make something like 🏠⬅️🐈✅🐕❌, and that can be communicated to anyone regardless of language. Really useful!

Great point, I definitely agree that non-standardized emojis are definitely one of the negatives of current emojis as a system. I think that's why I'm personally interested in the more graphical/"lackluster" unicode symbols, and wish they'd come more into vogue. Miscommunication's already easy enough without another layer of varying symbols to potentially make things wonky!

[Darmodej]

a thing i like about emojis is how their meanings evolve over time, like how now the moai represents a very specific sound effect

[Melooon]

Iv been watching this while working and I think a few people here would really enjoy it. It goes into who decides what emojis are created and some of the debates around them.

[WingsOfImagination]

Iv been watching this while working and I think a few people here would really enjoy it. It goes into who decides what emojis are created and some of the debates around them.

I've watched a similar documentary. Even if on the surface they seem pretty simple and innocent, they are actually quite.. politically charged. Like language itself, they are powerful. But we should not be speaking about such matters here in MelonLand

I do personally love emojis as a concept, they are expressive and add much liveliness to the conversation. Though text emoticons will always have a special place in my heart! (^o^)/

EDIT: Hey where's my Ozwomp?!

[Memory]

EDIT: Hey where's my Ozwomp?!

  Arrived at my doorstop just this morning.

[debleb]

i think emojis have their place, they definitely have a different vibe to emoticons but they’re useful enough and can convey some things better than an emoticon. they maybe look a little too “web 2.0” for my taste compared to smilies you get on forums if you get me though.

related, check out this dragon emoticon ^.==.^

[Cele]

It took me a long time to shift from emoticons to emojis. My family kinda laughed at me on WhatsApp when I used ":D" instead of a smiling emoji. But I used platforms where emojis weren't a possibility, so I was just used to emoticons. Nowadays, I use emojis a normal amount. I have the most ridiculous pet peeve with them, which is the emoji "authority". For some reason, they refused to name the sauna emoji, well, sauna, instead going for "person in a steamy room". Like we're allowerd to have all these culturally specific things like mooncakes etc that make no sense to people outside those cultures, but a sauna is too much?

[Memory]

I just always thought that emoji convey much more through their art style than I want them to; so I usually stick with text smileys.

Take the basic ":D" for example. Usually, it gets converted to the big-smile emoji; but depending on the icon set, this can have vastly different implications! ":D" to me looks like just a happy lil guy, perhaps a bit excited, perhaps simply sociable, generally pleased. I use it often to convey when I find something funny (but not extremely funny), if I am happy or if I want to be friendly and cuddly. It is my "default" smiley for friendly conversation.

What about the Apple emoji equivalent though?

I think this one looks much more careless, less engaged in the situation, perhaps a little more giggly, due to the closed eyes. Not what I want!

The SoftBank one?

This looks horrifying, but it's still meant to be equivalent to ":D"! It looks like it is forcing itself to smile, or has a bandage over its own mouth. Definitely looks much more uncomfortable.


The Samsung one looks like it is laughing, much stronger than what I want to convey.


This forum one that used to be the auto-convert for ":D"? I think it looks pretty creepy, like it is looking down from an elevated position. The bent mouth does not represent a simple chill smile, I think it looks much more like a terrible grin. The other one though is great and represents ":D" pretty well:


Other emoji have it even worse when it comes to their text smiley equivalents.
Like, the blushy emoji that represents ":)" usually is a very polite, personal emote that fits well:

This Apple one looks fine and conveys what I mean. But in Skype, the same emoji looks like it is trying to flirt with me!

The bottom line is: text emoji are unambiguous. Emoji can mean a whole array of things just based on their art style and where you view them. That is why I prefer text emoji.

[SilkSkull]

I have a love hate relationship with them, on one hand I will always choose "XD" over most devices laughing emojis because it has more character, I feel the same with most old school emoticons. On the other I love using emojis to make my dry humor just a little worse, my favorite example being putting an animal emoji right after that animals name. Other than that I have no big opinions, although I'm loving reading this!