I use emojis very sparingly, usually at the end of a sentence analogous to a punctuation mark. I never use more than two in a row, and never more than one of the same one.
In texting and messaging apps (as well as emails if I’m using Outlook) I may respond with a single emoji, often 👍, to indicate that I received the message and will comply with any requests.
The above demonstrates what I believe are the ideal use of emojis, as a compact way to express an otherwise unwieldy response, or a way to convey things like tone of voice and facial expression that is present in a face to face conversation but not in writing.
However, In my opinion, emojis rob the conversation of any gravitas whatsoever, so responding to “My dog died yesterday” with “I’m so sorry 😭😭😭” makes it sound like you’re making light of the situation. I get others may not feel the same way, so I don’t call them out when they do it, but it rubs me the wrong way personally.
Most screen readers will read out the unicode description of the character or render the description as a transcriber’s note on a braille display, so 🤮 is announced as face vomiting and written ⠈⠨⠣⠋⠁⠉⠑⠀⠧⠕⠍⠊⠞⠬⠈⠨⠜. If you spam a bunch (🔥🔥🔥🤣🤣🤣) it can quickly get very long.
It’s also apparent that people use the “wrong” emoji for the situation, and I don’t mean in the sense that the semantics of the symbol have widened or changed with usage. 😂 is often used to express sadness, when the description is “face with tears of joy”. 😢"crying face" would be much more apt.
I’m old. One of the elder Millennials who grew up on the internet. I stubbornly didn’t use emojis in any context for a very long time, but I did use emoticons sparingly =)
Eventually as more people of more diverse generations started using them in conversation with me, I adapted to kind of speak where they were at. Like you I mostly use them as punctuation at the end of a sentence to help clarify intent if I don’t think it’s clear otherwise. They can help be an indicator like that
Most importantly though, I think we all need to understand that there will never be a really clear consensus on this. We are going to have to learn to communicate with each other where we’re at and if you disregard someone solely on the style in which they use emojis you risk disregarding the opinion of some very intelligent people. And I think, personally, you’re gonna come off as a bit of a dick about it if you feel the need to post responses telling them so. I can’t change your opinions for you but maybe keep that to yourself.
Further notes: I actually include a lot of emojis and ANSI color sequences in my programs and scripts. Drives some people crazy but I find it really helps make some things more readable and draw my attention to things (taking care about what effect this might have on downstream ingestion of course, but most things handle emoji competently these days)