I haven’t specifically seen anyone go off the rails when it comes to emoji usage on Lemmy; I can only comment on my particular feelings about emoji: Like any tool, emoji can be used in ways which are confusing. However, the value of these little images conveying additional context to written text is useful. There is so much of the personal voice which is lost with written words, unadorned with body language, tone of voice, and facial expressions. Emoji are like a written solution to this issue (for those that don’t pick up on context on words alone). I am fine with the usage of emoji.

I don’t mind them when used appropriately, but remember that us old people may struggle to make out which emoji we’re looking at when the text is small.

To my eyes it also looks out of place in professional writing, so I would find it hard to take you seriously if you use emojis in such a context.

TL;DR: in a casual context, go nuts, but avoid for important communication where clarity and professionalism matters.

I see emojis as text’s substitute for body language. Body language is supposed to supplement the spoken word. Emojis should supplement the paragraph.

Trying to communicate with more emojis than text is akin to trying to communicate with more body language than spoken word.

Ever try to say something but forget the word, and you try to convey the meaning with body language instead? Overuse of emojis implies a similar lapse of thought.

If you can find mine it was hilarious when I did a similar thing XD

I like emojis 😬

Their intentionally bland, unpleasant to look at, and it makes you look like you just got on to the internet for the first time in your life.

it can quickly get unreadable. I mean, I’m fine having a smiley to mark-down the humour/sarcasm, or the bad news but on some social media it’s like

*During 🍑 🍆 the 🐱 👁️‍🗨️ at 💑 *

Even more straightforward stuff can still be messy, I am not saving much by writing 🇧🇪 still has no government (Is that Romania ? Germany ? Belgium ? ) over Belgium still has no government

I grew up with forums where emoticons were substituted with smiley images (on badly coded ones, “8)” turned into “😎” even when it was just a parenthetical ending with the number 8 or the eighth point in a bullet point list). I use emoji approximately when I would have used those smileys, it is a good thing they’re now standardized, but other than that I find them unnecessary and distracting.

what exactly have you seen people saying when they complain? when they do it like you did in the title, it’s just too busy for my eyes, I’ve been in Discord servers where the moderators ask people to remove most of the Emojis from their username because of how annoying it is (to them apparently. I find it a little obnoxious but not enough to care).

I basically use them as tone indicators. like

omg 😭

omg 🙄

omg 🖕

omg 💀

omg 🥵

etc.

It’s mostly just a snobbish “get off my lawn” response based on the popularity of said emojis on platforms popular with the youths. 🦾🧐🫴

It’s funny because I love them to death on slack. I think I prefer emojis as reactions rather than inline text. Also if you put them in line it can f*** up search

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.)

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

🤷🏽‍♂️

Emojis make reading slower because you’ll pay attention to both emojis and text , and try to understand it