Emoji Usage Debate

The cluster centers on debates about the effectiveness, universality, cultural interpretations, and acceptance of emojis in digital communication, with Hacker News users often criticizing them while defending their value for expressing emotion.

📉 Falling 0.5x Politics & Society
3,468
Comments
19
Years Active
5
Top Authors
#69
Topic ID

Activity Over Time

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Keywords

PacMan LLM HN RCS twitter.com adweek.com NSFW MSN RE emoji emojis emotion text communicate japanese emotional words messenger people write

Sample Comments

s_kilk Dec 11, 2019 View on HN

An object lesson in the problems of using emoji to actually convey meaning :)

espadrine Apr 6, 2016 View on HN

I might be misunderstanding the situation, but isn't emoji universal? Would it be ill-fitted here?

anxoo Jan 17, 2026 View on HN

lots of normal people like emoji. the kind of normal people who have never heard of hacker news

lapcat Jul 15, 2023 View on HN

Incorrect, because emoji are being used to communicate with other people on different systems. That's their primary purpose, not to write to yourself.

therealfigtree Oct 1, 2025 View on HN

Not to critique on the article, but as a general suggestion, it would be great if people don't use emojis as a scale. Unless it shows a specific character like number emojis, they are sometimes read differently by people from different language backgrounds. So what the author might be trying to say might lead to misunderstandings.

emodendroket Mar 11, 2021 View on HN

What exactly are we afraid will happen if someone uses an emoji instead of typing :) ?

rainbowmverse Jun 4, 2018 View on HN

If you haven't seen how emojis are used in the wild to enhance communication, it's probably not for you.

Fej Sep 8, 2016 View on HN

Is it wrong that I instantly think less of a website when I see gratuitous, unnecessary emoji?

jlokier Sep 13, 2020 View on HN

I find that a colourful emoji like [hmm, HN can't display an emoji] feels very different from a text emoticon or tag.It's such an illusion, too - the sender doesn't even see the same emoji character as I do because of different fonts and devices. Some emojis look sad or angry on some devices, and smiling on others. There's plenty of room for misinterpretation.But it adds feeling anyway!

komali2 Jun 5, 2018 View on HN

Did I? Maybe emoticons aren't as universal as we're assuming then ;)