[fbcpck]

I observed something related to what you've said.

In some casual/private Discord channels I frequent, there's usually a couple emojis that gets used a lot, that on its own have none or extremely ambiguous meaning. For most of them, I find it almost impossible to describe the meaning in words, yet at the same time everyone understands and acknowledges that it is not superfluous / that it conveys something.

We talked about these emojis and the best description we could come up with was that these are filler emojis. The primary purpose is to de-escalate the seriousness tone of a message, which by default is pretty serious for text-based messages. Think about how a message may come up as rude if it ends with a period (.) and without, then add another level after that; this is what the filler emoji does.

Aside from the seriousness de-escalation, we think it also helps with the tempo/pace of the conversation, similar to how in verbal conversation you pause/leave a gap when talking, as a cue for when other people can respond. The filler emoji here is that pause.

To (outside) observers unable to understand/confused by the meaning of the (singular) filler emoji, this can easily be seen as devolving the language, but I'd argue that it actually conveys something very complex extremely concisely with one emoji.