Most companies have a culture of weird acronyms and phrases that are totally meaningless outside the context of that culture. It's expected that you won't under

Most companies have a culture of weird acronyms and phrases that are totally meaningless outside the context of that culture. It's expected that you won't understand normal discourse for the first couple weeks. I think emoji-usage is a subset of this linguistic phenomenon. At my company, we have thousands of emoji-reacts (including surprised-pikachu), that probably have widely-divergent meanings to their users. Some people have seen them outside of the company before, and use them / seek them out knowingly. Those that don't pick it up pretty quickly. You're right that the meaning is better when you're "in on it", but I think you might be overrating how big of a deal it is to become "in on it", and underrating it's utility as a form of expression, especially emotional expression, in a medium that normally lacks visual expression / body language / intonation.