this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2023
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I feel like emoticons are in some ways cheating at using words and thus it shows a lack of effort put into your communication. I use them mostly in quicker format messaging like Discord. I don't blame anyone for using a ๐คท or such but I'd like to try to be more eloquent.
While I get what you're saying and I think sometimes emojis can absolutely be overused or used in place of textual clarification, I feel they also serve as an effective substitute for a lack of non-verbal communication. Generally speaking, "what people say" is only half the story, and "how they say it" (the nuances of facial/bodily expressions, tone of voice, etc) is the other half.
When writing narratives, we get away from this by means of, well, narration. "... he said, cheerfully"; "... he replied, with just a twinge of annoyance to his voice"; "she said, while averting her eyes".
In first person communications like social media, we don't really have an effective way to communicate that sort of nuance. We do have action asterisks shudders in horror, shorthand expressions to represent actions like LOL, and emoji ๐คทโโ๏ธ as potential alternatives, as well as some community-driven linguistic nuance like Reddit's usage of "/s" to indicate sarcasm.
We could also go all old-timey letter writing and say things like "while I find myself hesitant to reply to you in fear that you will consider it an attack, I do find myself with some concerns in regards to your comment and will elaborate below. I hope that you will not take these concerns as dismissive of your opinion in any way, as I simply mean to clarify some doubts and seek your own opinion on my thoughts as presented above." (This might be an example of "overly eloquent" and there is probably a happy medium.)
I find the ever-evolving linguistics of internet communication to be really fascinating, if you can't tell!
Absolutely, and it isn't to say I never use emoji/emoticons but I don't on social media that much. You can convey emotion and vibe with a bit of nuanced typing. This is likely lost on some folks but others seem to be tuned to it, almost like body language. Grammarly actually has a tone mapper built in to tell you what sort of tone you are sending out.
along those lines, I have also seen emojis being used as the modern equivalent of determinatives
relevant xkcd
What if you tried to express your emotional attitude to the person you are talking to? Or try to describe how you feel when you have had a good day.
I don't always do it well in text messages and then I use emoticons to reflect emotion.
Emoji might be the right choice there. Sometimes I'll just send back ๐คท or a gif in text messages or quicker formats but for something like Lemmy or Mastodon, I think a more effortful reply is desired since the point of those services is the conversation.