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Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

Yes, but I can't think of an example where a rocketship emoji would fit in a conversation (except for marketing language, which I consider to be hostile).

Emojis directly corresponding to emotions make more sense: a facepalm emoji expresses the same thing that an actual gesture would.

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"I just got a job offer! "

Unless you've been hired as an astronaut, I fail to see how a rocketship emoji would communicate anything relevant. An exclamation mark (or more than one) is a time-honored way of expressing excitement.

Consider that you failing to see these things is a "you" thing, not a "people are doing it wrong" thing.

Emojis are part of today's written culture because they're so trivially included alongside things being written today. You are fighting a battle that has long ended: they're a feature of communication now. Just like older ASCII emojis, and various other even older nonstandard-standards of comms.

And replying with an exclamation mark, something I've done myself many times, is incredibly ambiguous and not the best example you could come up with here :)

Also, you're kinda talking past each other here in terms of emojis in a message vs emojis as reaction.

Literally nobody I communicate with uses emojis beyond emoticons that have been converted by the software into emojis.

What kind of people do you work with?

I'm a consultant, I work with all kinds of people. The number one skill required is communication, and learning to communicate with new teams, new people, new companies. All of them have different ways to communicate. Many of them use emojis, not all, but I also work with lots of different countries.

I also do quite a bit of work in the gaming community which has its own custom emoji culture, a different beast altogether.

People communicate outside of work; a heart to a loved one, my dad using a car emoji in the family group chat to indicate he is driving home from work, a thumbs-up when someone in a friend group suggest going to a movie

Are you, like probably 95% of us on this forum working in tech?

Edit: Yup, you're a techie. Hint: you live in a bubble.

“Signed a big client!”

“Things are looking up!”

“______ got a promotion to ___________!”

“Releasing our new version/marketing campaign/product tomorrow!”

Maybe I'm too old, but in all these cases, the exclamation mark is doing all of the job of expressing elation, and adding a rocketship icon would be redundant.

Is smiling when saying these things face-to-face redundant because the tone of your voice does all of the job of expressing elation?

You can't say these things in the right tone without smiling - the very act of smiling changes how you speak.

You’re getting warmer!

Ok, fair, I guess you're trying to bait me into admitting that emojis are a way of expressing fundamentally different shades of emotions that are possible with ASCII.

I suppose this may be right, some people may be already thinking in emojis, the way some of my generation learned to think in emoticons.

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