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Comment by ruthmarx | Hacker News Reader

> Emoticons was a western word for emoji I think, which originated in Japan.

Emoticons predate emoji are were always purely ascii text based.

In an alternative universe where someone other than Americans invented the popular character set, would emoticons have existed at all if computers had the capability to display Unicode glyphs from the start? It feels like still insisting on using Morse code after keyboards were invented.

> would emoticons have existed at all if computers had the capability to display Unicode glyphs from the start?

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.

I prefer the aesthetic of it.

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.

Yes, though there were intermediaries like CP437 [0] which contained crude emoji. That said, though I was exposed to them growing up in the 90s, emoticons by far dominated every message board and chat service I ever used. Emoji didn’t really take off (at least, in America) until smartphones hit.

[0]: https://www.aivosto.com/articles/charsets-codepages-dos.html

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