This is such an old fud thing to say. As if using an emoji wasn't a mainstream thing for the vast majority of people to do.

Personally I like the inflections and emoji brings, plus it makes statements that might otherwise be taken as hostile either as well intentioned or just good old fashioned ribbing.

They added the buttons so brigades would use those instead of commenting.

Not quite, it's difficult to avoid using votes as a heuristic for post quality. A reader's first impression of a heavily downvoted comment is negative. It encourages groupthink, downvoted comments are unacceptable, and serve as examples to others who might step out of line. Also, there is less pause when downvoting a comment if it is already well in the negative. When you think about it, the whole downvoting thing is antisocial. It's bizarre that almost every popular discussion platform these days allows users to passively shit on each other as a core feature.