Until the late 90s, we lived on IRC, newsgroups, and email lists. Just plain text, probably with monospace fonts as well. The web and instant messaging caught

Until the late 90s, we lived on IRC, newsgroups, and email lists. Just plain text, probably with monospace fonts as well. The web and instant messaging caught on later. I, too, think most emoji are just a picture, and I don't get what feeling or message most of them are supposed to convey. Certainly I don't find them useful to replace a word I can type in 0.4 seconds. Is it really useful to include a picture of a basketball on a message already obviously about basketball? Still, I try to get on with the times and sprinkle them in my WhatsApp messages sometimes.