Comment by esafak
17 hours ago
That's a great point, but I am skeptical that emojis adequately carry the affect of nonverbal communication. I believe you make a case for sending audio/video messages alongside the text.
17 hours ago
That's a great point, but I am skeptical that emojis adequately carry the affect of nonverbal communication. I believe you make a case for sending audio/video messages alongside the text.
I think some emoji have directly and already entered the colloquial lexicon of being essentially emotional content punctuation marks and modifiers. It's still a different communication channel than facial, body language, and tonal modifiers of physical presence and verbal communications, but it still feels like the gap is closing.
There are also ways that emoji used as such are better, or at least more accessible, than their facial/body language counterparts: a screen reader can read the name of an emoji to a blind person to get a sense of it whereas facial recognition software that can verbalize such things still isn't always so accurate; that same tool of glancing at an emoji name is also open to neuro-divergent and other differently abled people that may have difficulty interpreting facial expressions and body language in real time.
How do you feel about plaintext smilies? People were doing those long before emoji existed. :) :p :D
The same way. For me the proper use of emojis is in reactions, to cut down on brief responses that cause clutter and undesirable notifications. I am less welcoming of them in the middle of a message, where they don't serve that purpose.