41–50 of 61 posts
That definitely ended his candidacy.
Not sure exactly what it meant, but couldn’t think of a good explanation for it.
Another use is just to tack on to sentences like a little pizzaz. I’m going to the doctor :hospital:
Another common use is to soften formal-sounding written-only language. A lot of relatively older people don’t get or think about how their regular-ass sentence writing in informal contexts sounds stiff, angry, or even passive-aggressive to some younger people. Like writing a chat message with a period at the end? That can come off as very passive-aggressive. (See how even regular, grammatical, perfectly HN-approved (no emoticons) can have a tone even without any snark?) So if you have to write a sentence at the end? A smiley can soften that.
The ambiguity can also be intended. We all write for different people. We don’t intend to communicate perfectly. Some ambiguity is often good (in our opinion). One of the emoticons is interpreted by some as passive-aggressive, but far from all. That sounds like a great thing for a passive-aggressive person: plausible deniability.
People that dislike emojis and who also like to communicate clearly (perhaps to a fault) can take heart that some of the slang-energy is diverted into symbols. Now your regular-ass words are less likely to take on new, bewildering meanings.
>> rebelled-against emojis, meaning the emojis that people use for different meanings than what their title suggests they mean. The top emoji people don’t use as intended is the persevering face, with only 5% using it as intended and the majority using it to signify frustration I’m willing to bet money that less than 5% of the people using the Eggplant emoji actually mean eggplant.
The old ones like "Nail Polish" were also proposed in large groups and don't have a special document just for themselves. But new ones do, for example:
"Dotted-line face": https://www.unicode.org/cgi-bin/GetDocumentLink?L2/20-223
"Head shaking horizontally": https://www.unicode.org/cgi-bin/GetDocumentLink?L2/23-034
"Phoenix": https://www.unicode.org/cgi-bin/GetDocumentLink?L2/23-033
[1] https://www.unicode.org/emoji/charts/emoji-proposals.html
A huge percentage (most?) emojis are unhelpful precisely because their meanings are unclear. If they're from someone I've interacted with enough then I learn how to decipher what they mean by different ones, but if I've not then it's too risky to try and guess. This aspect of emojis is why I dislike them.
Confusing the reader is exactly what I intend with that upside down smiley face Well done, internet survey.