Anyone who sends little yellow men as part of a business conversation deserves whatever misfortune befalls them.
Anyone who conducts a business conversation over any medium but snail mail, fax, email or the phone deserves whatever misfortune befalls them.
I know this is old-fashioned, but business is business, personal is personal.
That's going against progress, just like some people were against electronic communication for business transactions when they were first introduced.
I understand where you are coming from, texts are familiar, but more and more business run solely on messaging platforms and rely on texts to conduct business.
I've seen people fire off the first thing that comes to mind in a text message in a business setting and almost always realize they weren't as precise as they wanted to be and have to attempt to correct themselves with follow on messages. This mistake and ensuing retraction almost always sours the deal.
Edit: addendum (I'm aware I'm doing exactly what I just made a case against)
Mine, and the Court's right now, expectation is that written communication does not need to be immediate. And since you have a chance to think through what you'd like to write, your first message has no reason not to be precise and correct to your intentions.
People are mixing the personal domain and business all the time. For example: in business meetings, people smile and they tell jokes; also, business people often go out for dinner together.
And we recognize that we still don't all interpret those smiles the same way, as is evident in many legal codes not enforcing "handshake" deals, and written agreements almost always supercede oral ones.
I like feeling slightly relaxed at work, and I feel like I'm way more productive than in an environment that feels cold, corporate or artificial.
Having said this, I think that it's really important to listen to the cultural signals that arise from your work environment. I wouldn't be lax, or use emoji/gifs in an environment where it didn't feel appropriate.
But any external conversations or conversations where money is on the table, emojis and gifs are too ambiguous.
As a point of clarification, I'm all for emoji men and gifs in personal communication. I'm probably the biggest giphy user in any given slack group, but only once I feel comfortable with the other channel participants. One of the first things I do is install the cult of the party parrot emoji pack.
But for any communication with outside parties, or where money is on the table, there is no place for emoji, as they're too imprecise.