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Comment by lostgame | Hacker News Reader

I don’t consider myself a jaded individual; but that this is #3 right now on HN’s front page bewilders and confuses me.

I feel like I could go into /new/ and find at least a couple articles more relevant and interesting than this.

The average HN’er may tolerate this post, and maybe 5-10% might actually care, but there’s a huge amount of the developer community I’ve seen that mostly just looks down on emoji as a frankly immature way to communicate. Emoji-related news is often beleaguered with comments akin to this one, and this time it’s my turn, I suppose.

This news may matter to my partner and I, to have another meme to screw with. It may matter to a perhaps younger or less tech-centric group.

But developers, hackers, and startup folks? Really?

How does the front page pick it’s content? I assume algorithmically?

View on HN

Why does HN have to be so serious all the time? I for one am totally OK with the occasional light-hearted piece.

> frankly immature way to communicate

And this is vaguely insulting to the vast majority of smartphone and/or internet users.

We can have light-hearted pieces that are actually relevant to tech or science in an interesting, or meaningful way.

Also, again, my partner and I use emoji all the time, but I absolutely certainly do not when communicating with other developers, clients, or anything with an air of professionality.

Case in point: HN does not support emoji. Or, if it does, certainly nobody uses them. And it is certainly not a feature I’ve seen requested here.

I don't think you understand what "light-hearted" means...

The whole point is that it doesn't have to be relevant to tech or science in a meaningful way.

I also don't use emoji when communicating with clients or in anything that should carry a professional tone. But I'm also a person with a personal life and personal friends and so on.

I wish I could use an eye-roll emoji right now...

mostly just looks down on emoji as a frankly immature way to communicate.

When you see something popular that you don't understand, the answer is never that people are stupid/immature/etc. It's that they have incentives and impulses that you don't yet understand. Choosing to dismiss those people, instead of seeking to understand why they're doing what they're doing, means that there are motives in play you don't comprehend, which means that there are opportunities you can't take advantage of because you don't understand what's actually happening.

but there’s a huge amount of the developer community I’ve seen that mostly just looks down on emoji as a frankly immature way to communicate

You know, I was willing to just scroll to the bottom of the comments, then go find something else to read between builds. But if it pisses off those Grumpy Gus's, well, I guess I'll scroll baaaaack to the top and click the up arrow just to help make sure it stays at #3.

I found it interesting to learn that all these companies are re-drawing all of these emoji in different ways, that there is actually a site that writes news about emoji, and that people turn out to hold strong views on these matters.

> I don’t consider myself a jaded individual

Time to reconsider he said jadedly.

I basically hate emoji, and this is sort of why; when my ascii smilie faces started getting translated into, frankly, horribly ugly emoji that looked nothing like what I wanted to convey, it changed the meaning of what I was 'saying', and in a different way for each platform.

I recognize that this is naive; just because I 'see' an ascii smilie one way doesn't mean others interpret it the same way, but I prefer that illusion to someone else's version being forced on me.

At least in something like Slack, I know the user is getting what I'm choosing.

Developers, hackers, and startup folks are people. People like to be entertained.

This is quite entertaining especially as someone who lives in the west coast and has a few east coast friends with strong bagel and pizza preferences. It's entertaining because it's a discussion about culture, which is easy to miss if you don't accept that Emoji are quickly becoming culture.

Entertainment has value, humor has value, and silliness has value (clearly, something HN may not get). This is the difference between something sterile and something human.

I think it's being sarcastically upvoted. I joined.

Fresh hot posts appear on the top of the front page for some time.

As post ages, it needs more upvotes to stay on the FP.

It prevents some posts to occupy top for too long.

Maybe they think it’s funny?

On the other hand, writing self-righteous comments about how superior you are for seeing emojis as immature is very mature.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%F0%9F%8D%A0 progress (HN does not like emoji's it strips them: cool URL's don't change)

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