These are essentially my thoughts. They’re helpful for indicating context (tone/expression/sentiment). The goal of language is communication; words alone can struggle with that. Well-placed emojis help improve communication. Numerous emojis breaking up sentences makes them harder to read; imo it impairs communication.
I also don’t like the idea of policing others’ use of a harmless sub-dialect of online communication just because one decides not to use it themselves. I personally don’t use or enjoy the ‘emojis’ that are just ‘fun graphics we like’ (most Discord custom emotes are this). Nor do I like that filter where 1-3 emojis are inserted after basically every single word. But that’s because it’s not my online dialect; it doesn’t mean people who use emojis that way are ‘wrong’.
Different platforms have different ‘accents’, and emojis are only one example of that. I find the numerous dialects of online English to be a fascinating topic that isn’t often considered.
Sometimes I’d feel sad that a trait of say, Tumblr’s dialect didn’t have a Reddit equivalent: Tumblr uses punctuation, capitalisation, and even typos as a tone indicator. A Redditor doesn’t know the different tones implied amongst these, even though most Tumblr users do:
- no. stop
- no stop
- noo staaaaahp
- noolkjaflakud STOP
- No. Stop.
- NO STOP
I can tell which of these are vaguely upset, genuinely upset, or pretending to be upset in a few different ways. Reddit doesn’t have that, because it expects everybody to write with formal grammar all the time, including not ‘allowing’ emojis as tone indicators. I suspect that formal writing style probably contributes to why so many comments are read in bad faith as smug/adversarial. 😢
So fluid ounces are just metric with extra steps :/