this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2023
213 points (88.4% liked)

Asklemmy

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Reading comments in different communities, I noticed that users hardly leave smilies. Why is that?

༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ

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[–] [email protected] 139 points 10 months ago (12 children)

No idea, here's a sword

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

[–] [email protected] 39 points 10 months ago

That's a nice sword.

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[–] [email protected] 109 points 10 months ago (6 children)

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

  • emoticon: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  • emoji: 🤷
  • emoticon: =>^.^<=
  • emoji: 🐱
[–] [email protected] 31 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

It's understandable. Back in the old old days, these 😱 were often called emoticons. The reason was that the chat software that people used to automatically replaced ;-) by 😉. The menu was the same and the name of this menu was emoticon.

One of the most famous example of this is MSN Messenger.

People keep the habit to call them emoticons.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

In the old old days, emojis didn’t exist yet, until NTT DoCoMo created them for mobile phones. Emoticons predate them.

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[–] [email protected] 68 points 10 months ago (8 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 57 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Are emojis considered emoticons? Call me old but I think this is an emoticon ;-) and this is an emoji 😉

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago (7 children)

Emoticons are old internet. Emojis are boomer, normie, and corpo friendly translations.

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[–] [email protected] 51 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 10 months ago (1 children)

My 80 old father-in-law spams emoticons like he's a 15 year old girl. Cringe-worthy and hillarious at the same time 😂

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[–] [email protected] 50 points 10 months ago (15 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 10 months ago (1 children)

¯⁠\⁠_⁠༼⁠ᴼ⁠ل͜⁠ᴼ⁠༽⁠_⁠/⁠¯

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 10 months ago (1 children)

What kind of engineering manager isn’t using a dramatic shrug emoji or emoticon dozens of times every day?!

Don’t tell me your team has their shit together.

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 10 months ago (2 children)

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!

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago

I xD all the time 😤

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 10 months ago (4 children)

ITT: People conflating emojis and emoticons.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

In msn messenger emoticons were what emojis are today. So to me emoticons and emojis are the same... i dont what to call the things op refers to... maybe ASCII emoticons?

Edit: turns out im wrong https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoticon

Edit: sort of wrong... emojis are also officially called emoticons

[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago

It probably doesn't help that a lot of things will take your emoticons and automatically convert them into emojis for you. Like you type :-) and it changes it to 🙂 without even asking. I've run into this in a lot of chat clients.

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 10 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 40 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Emoticons are like swear words.

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

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 10 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 33 points 10 months ago (6 children)

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
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[–] [email protected] 31 points 10 months ago (6 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I use them as a complement in my messages where I want to convey an emotion which isn't obvious from the text itself. Like if I'm being self-deprecating in a joking manner, e.g. Not very easy to convey in text. But if I add some kind of smiling-ish emoji or something, it's clearer that I'm not serious.

Overuse is cringe however.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[–] [email protected] 26 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 10 months ago (4 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Also Reddit didn’t support emojis for a long time. But yeah, it was considered very “normie” (hate that term but applicable)

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 10 months ago (2 children)

The yoots make fun of me when I do :(

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 10 months ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 10 months ago (4 children)

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 😎

[–] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago (5 children)

I think people 😘 find them more obnoxious 😱 than informative, and rate 💯 opinions higher than 😜 emotional reactions, because emotions are 🤑 cheap and add nothing to a constructive 🏗️ discussion

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 10 months ago (1 children)

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago (2 children)

┬──┬ ノ( ゜-゜ノ)

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 21 points 10 months ago

Tis but a flesh wound

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 10 months ago (1 children)

We prefer to use our words.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago (6 children)

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?

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago (3 children)

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...

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I can use them if I want. 🙂

I just don't feel like it ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago (3 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Back in my day we called them avatars, youngster!

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago (1 children)

(ノ◕ヮ◕)ノ*:・゚✧

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