One of the things that has fascinated me about emoji is that they are a type of character that had been largely unfamiliar to most of the world: ideograms. While their emergence in a country with a well-established ideographic writing system—Japan, kanji—may not be surprising, their widespread adoption in places that had basically used only alphabets is, at least to me.

I wonder to what extent emoji use might evolve so that people without a common spoken language can use them to communicate with each other, the way classical Chinese has historically been used in East Asia. Judging from some emoji-filled comment sections I’ve seen on streaming platforms, it seems that that evolution may have already begun.