"In the end, I found myself adding a lot of exclamation marks, "hahaha", and writing more sentences to better communicate my mood. The need to better convey my messages forced me to have a deeper understanding what I was trying to communicate in the first place. Sometimes, a heart means “I love you”, “I miss you”, “I hope you’ll feel better soon”, “I love what you’re saying”, etc. Was I expecting my interlocutors to guess the exact meaning? I’m happy that it forced me to phrase my thoughts, look deeper into them, better identify and express them. I had to write "Thank you" or "That's great!" instead of adding a reaction emoji under a Slack message, Twitter DM, or Discord message, and I like to believe that those words carried more value than one more thumbs up added to the pile."
This helped me make a connection to a larger phenomenon in changing speech, something which I struggle with. Emojis a way of communicating with loose precision. There are also analogous ways to do so while using words. And there are speakers in their daily speech which greatly lean into the saftey of loose precision to the point of subterfurge and agression.
A 'like' softens all opinion. A 'you know' coerces the listener to agree. A 'whatever' implies others' priorities are misplaced. An 'uh' or 'um' is a don't interrupt me! Overreliance on ambiguous prounouns. 'Stuff' or 'Thing'.
I find these mechanisms off putting. They sometimes correlate with paranoia, esteem issues, or sociopathy. So I try to avoid such speakers if possible, since I feel like an asshole to point it out.
It's ok to wait until your thoughts are formed. It's ok to be incorrect. Pick your target and try to hit it. If you communicate with loose precision or emoji you inhibit building knowledge together.