Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It would be pretty hard to express the sentiment the ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ That's what acronyms were used for. Back in the day of AIM/ICQ I never felt I had issues expressing myself with just text. It was text supplemented with a healthy dose of emoticons and acronyms, which leads me to believe that emoji are redundant
Emoticons are severely limited in their range of expressivity. It’s hard to do much more than :) :( and :/. Acronyms are limited in both range of expressivity and audience size. Acronyms require prior agreement on what they mean, so there’s a barrier to their basic use and another barrier separating people that don’t know what they stand for. This severely limits your audience size and the number of acronyms you can…
Part of what is off-putting about emoji is that they make text look like early first-language reading materials, where pictures of objects are embedded next to the word you are meant to learn. It's kind of off-putting to read, at least for those of us who grew up in that experience.
I also do not share your adoration for things that are super instantly accessible. There is much value in learning, and in struggling along the path to learning, that people think they don't want or need. Linguistic training (like learning to read written words) is a necessary skill for assimilating oneself to a new culture or in-group and language is one of the best methods for practicing that.
Also, are emoji really so universally understood? Are the peach or eggplant really universally understood to stand in for genitalia? Like almost everything the simplest form of emoji are accessible but I do not think everyone in the world is on the same page about the finer points on how to use some symbols