[pfp]

Agreed.

The whole emoji phenomenon is a kind of infantilizing cultural rot -- it makes serious, static documentation and tooling resemble a children's book and hinders live communication by encouraging vague single-pictogram messages and the expression of raw emotions (genuine or not) instead of mature and balanced thoughts.

[giraffe_lady]

None of these things are mutually exclusive the way you're implying. This is a "cultural degeneracy" argument, which are always suspect imo. You are certainly entitled to dislike the aesthetics of shifts in communication, but you're basically just assuming that the changes are inherently negative and there's no reason to think they are.

"Single-pictogram messages and expression of raw emotion" are simply not mutually exclusive with mature, well-considered, intentional communication.