No idea, here's a sword

cxxx[::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::>

second a few other comments, a lot of people conflating emoticons and emojis

• emoticon: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
• emoji: 🤷
• emoticon: =>^.^<=
• emoji: 🐱

For me emoticons were something that started when all of the boomers came to Facebook. Floods and floods of useless emojis left and right. So now I feel weird using them, like I'm cheapening the platform while also acting like the people that ruined Facebook for me

My hypothesis: Lemmy has an older userbase, and in general older people feel less of a need to express their emotions. They're busier discussing the topic than highlighting their attitude towards it.

Perhaps cultural reinforcement plays a role, too. As emoticons and emojis are less used, they feel more out of place, so people who'd use them elsewhere avoid them here.

Personally I feel like if I need to use one, then I've done a poor job of writing.

I guess the other component is that I write a lot at work (I'm an engineering manager) and emoticons aren't really appropriate for that kind of communication, so I'm not in the habit of using them.

All these people singing the praises of emoticons over emojis, and not a single XD to be seen. I know you're old enough to remember the XD times! XD you cowards!

ITT: People conflating emojis and emoticons.

Emoticons are representations of emotions. We don't have those. We're dead inside.

Emoticons are like swear words.

I use them sparingly not because I disapprove of them, but to preserve their effectiveness.

We don't like when people add color to our monochromatic text.

Just for you

• ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
• ಠ_ಠ
• (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻)
• ┬──┬ ノ( ゜-゜ノ)
• ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
• ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ
• ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
• (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞
• ヾ(⌐■_■)ノ♪
• (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻
• ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)
• (👁 ͜ʖ👁)
• (งツ)ว
• ʘ‿ʘ
• ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ
• (•_•)
• ( •_•)>⌐■-■
• (⌐■_■)
• [̲̅$̲̅(̲̅ ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°̲̅)̲̅$̲̅]
• (シ_ _)シ

I find them obnoxius, just like inserting animated gifs and meme responses. If used in serious context it makes the whole post look cringe, using them to replace words is fit only for smartphone troglodytes sending character-limited posts/SMS.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

People on Reddit rarely did, and I feel like this behavior has spread to Lemmy.

A lot of us came from reddit where it was considered taboo to use emojis.

The yoots make fun of me when I do :(

Aside from using them in reactions during discussions with group that I know (Discord, Chat/Hangouts), they're too fuzzy in definition to be useful in conversations. When reading on Lemmy if I run into emoticons, I just skip over them as noise in the stream. I don't even try to figure out what the person is trying to convey since I'm not going to be able to track whatever the latest trends are in their meaning. It's the same reason you don't spam a public forum like this with youth slang if you want to communicate with a wide demographic of members.

I think most oldies are embarrassed by them. I'm not though, but I only surf the world wide web from my phone, so perhaps I'm more hip 😎

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

We prefer to use our words.

¯_(ツ)_/¯

Everything after ascii art was a mistake. It feels childish to use emoticons, a lot of users here grew up on platforms that only had text and to see emoticons is jarring. Needing to use an image for emotional context is poor writing.

Why I personally don't use emoji that often, especially on Lemmy, in no particular order:

• I don't feel the need to indicate emotion or facial expression as much as in a personal conversation.
• combination of a high resolution monitor I'm sitting kind of far away from makes most of them look like nearly identical yellow circles.
• There's like nine variations of sticking tongue out. And a lot of them were decided by the Japanese so a thing that looks like it's teasing officially means "I AM DISRESPECTFUL TO DIRT" so emoji are generators of misunderstanding. Especially when different systems render them differently so a face that looks scared on a Samsung might look angry on an Apple or like an office building on a PC.
• I'm on a PC, typing on an actual keyboard. To insert an emoji, I have to move my hand to a mouse and navigate a menu. That menu isn't provided by the system itself; it may or may not be provided by the text box itself, and they're all different and have their own quirks. And I'm sick of learning them.
• I just can't help it, the habit some folks have of either replacing nouns with emoji aka "I went to the 🏜️ and crammed a 🌵 up my 🍑 and now it's ⭕ " or even worse the MLM Hun tactic of typing the word outright then adding a corresponding emoji just feels childish and dumb to me.

Call me an old man yelling at cloud if you want but simple shit like :) worked for conveying emotional tone or facial expression in a way that emoji just don't. Like consider these two: 😀 😃 "Smiling face" and "Smiling face with big eyes." Without them right next to each other, you probably wouldn't realize the difference, so why are they both in the standard?

I'm coming from the old ages of internet where we didn't have them. I'm fine with them, but I'm too old to use them comfortably.

It's fine. Use them if you like, but I don't really see the value in systems such as Discord where you pay money to have special emojis and so on...

I can use them if I want. 🙂

I just don't feel like it ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

you dont even have a pfp

Usually I only use them when I personally know who I'm talking to. Because who knows how a random person will react to an emoji, misunderstanding their meaning, unintentionally or intentionally.

I also sometimes use them to indicate how casual my post is and should not be taken too seriously.

(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

well I don't have such a menu for those premade faces, so I just use emoji's instead..., those larger ones take up too much space imo.

I'll use :) , :(, :/, :P, :D, :|, ;) :O, XD... they are nice and compact and get the point across.

I don't like to have to press a button, then search for an emoji. Emoticons are faster to write, I mostly use the :), :/, etc.

I changed that in Mastodon, for example. Someone told me that screen readers have trouble reading emoticons, so I mostly use stickers or emojis there.