I am not against emojis overall. But to put it in perspective, the way emojis work they do draw a lot of extra attention to themselves. Specifically because they don’t follow text color so are really distinct.
So to me, personally, a text with a lot of emojis sprinkled in can come across as busy to the point of distracting to read or a bit shouty.
In my (again personal) view emojis, smilies, etc are most useful when used in moderation on key points in a message. It’s also with that reason that on platforms like Lemmy, reddit or basically any old forum I do think they generally don’t have a place in titles.
I hope that this makes sense? 🙂
Edit: To maybe clarify it a bit further
Emojis can also basically be a type of “fluff content”:
“The Fluff Principle: on a user-voted news site, the links that are easiest to judge will take over unless you take specific measures to prevent it.”
What this means is basically the following, say you have two submissions:
An article - takes a few minutes to judge.
An image - takes a few seconds to judge.
So in the time that it takes person A to read and judge he article person B, C, D, E and F already saw the image and made their judgement. So basically images will rise to the top not because they are more popular, but simply because it takes less time to vote on them, so they gather votes faster.
To get back to the title thing I mentioned. More often than not I see people use emojis in titles not to strengthen the title, but simply to draw attention to it. And the same thing I have seen in in messages in general. Like I said above, it then starts to approach “shouting” from my perspective. So it isn’t emojis themselves I then have an issue with, it is just that they then fall in the same category as ALL CAPS and bolded text that shouldn’t be bolded and all that.
I have photosensitivity. I need to get animated emojis off my screen as quickly as possible since they bring me closer to my seizure threshold.
Think of it like a cup. Skimming quickly past a few animated emojis won’t fill the cup on their own, but if it’s already full from other things, even that little bit is a risk for it spilling over into a seizure. If I were to try to read a lengthy post with animated emojis, forget it.
Laugh at me if it makes you feel superior. You probably are.
I wouldn’t laugh at you. I once knew someone who had photosensitivity, schizophrenia, got me infected with COVID… and still was a great person.
You’ve raised a good point, and I agree that it should be an accessibility option.
Is it only the animations that trigger it, or also the colors while scrolling past static images? I’m thinking, it would be feasible to have options like:
Emojis: show | hide
Full color | only “B/W” (in whatever background/foreground settings you’re using)
Animated | Only first frame | Animate on mouse over or click
The anti-emoji thing was ridiculous anyway 🤷🏽♀️
I am not against emojis overall. But to put it in perspective, the way emojis work they do draw a lot of extra attention to themselves. Specifically because they don’t follow text color so are really distinct. So to me, personally, a text with a lot of emojis sprinkled in can come across as busy to the point of distracting to read or a bit shouty.
In my (again personal) view emojis, smilies, etc are most useful when used in moderation on key points in a message. It’s also with that reason that on platforms like Lemmy, reddit or basically any old forum I do think they generally don’t have a place in titles.
I hope that this makes sense? 🙂
Edit: To maybe clarify it a bit further
Emojis can also basically be a type of “fluff content”:
Source: Article by Paul Graham
What this means is basically the following, say you have two submissions:
So in the time that it takes person A to read and judge he article person B, C, D, E and F already saw the image and made their judgement. So basically images will rise to the top not because they are more popular, but simply because it takes less time to vote on them, so they gather votes faster.
To get back to the title thing I mentioned. More often than not I see people use emojis in titles not to strengthen the title, but simply to draw attention to it. And the same thing I have seen in in messages in general. Like I said above, it then starts to approach “shouting” from my perspective. So it isn’t emojis themselves I then have an issue with, it is just that they then fall in the same category as ALL CAPS and bolded text that shouldn’t be bolded and all that.
I have photosensitivity. I need to get animated emojis off my screen as quickly as possible since they bring me closer to my seizure threshold.
Think of it like a cup. Skimming quickly past a few animated emojis won’t fill the cup on their own, but if it’s already full from other things, even that little bit is a risk for it spilling over into a seizure. If I were to try to read a lengthy post with animated emojis, forget it.
Laugh at me if it makes you feel superior. You probably are.
I wouldn’t laugh at you. I once knew someone who had photosensitivity, schizophrenia, got me infected with COVID… and still was a great person.
You’ve raised a good point, and I agree that it should be an accessibility option.
Is it only the animations that trigger it, or also the colors while scrolling past static images? I’m thinking, it would be feasible to have options like:
Oh, sorry I posted one then. That sounds like something that should be included asap in accessibility options.