I’ll grant emoticons (e.g. :-D) as being textual, because they are composed of the building blocks of ASCII. An emoji, though consisting of Unicode code point[s], cannot say the same, unless you’re arguing that they’re all bits, which is reductionist.
The distinction between one being text and one being pictures isn't a widely used one I don't think, please someone correct me if I am wrong. I think it's perhaps a retroactive distinction in certain social circles/settings but not particularly consistent.
Though the similarity to emoticon is amusing.
I wonder if the specific kanji for (e) was picked for it's reading, and thus double entendre in English, intentionally.
Emoticons predate emoji are were always purely ascii text based.
Probably not.
> It feels like still insisting on using Morse code after keyboards were invented.
For some of us older people it's a habit. Easier to type instead of going looking for an emoji, especially if not on a phone.
But also there are specific tones for me and long term friends, that are not perfectly captured in the myriad different pictures.
For example, ;_; and :P from english IRC days, do not map perfectly to the tongue out picture emojis in almost any set I have seen.
[0]: https://www.aivosto.com/articles/charsets-codepages-dos.html
Not to even mention Greek and the like.