A long time ago, when I have been downloading the latest share- or freeware from Tucows, I've established a pretty good-working metric for when a software has j

A long time ago, when I have been downloading the latest share- or freeware from Tucows, I've established a pretty good-working metric for when a software has jumped the shark for me personally. It was when a major release's biggest change has been the introduction of skins -- it mostly meant that the authors found out how to make them -- it has been the hype of the time after all -- and deemed them more important than other features. I get the same feeling recently with Emojis. They might be improving the fun factor of your software, especially if it's of a communications kind, but shoehorning them everywhere else feels wrong on so many levels. I dread to think of how many man-years have been put into getting emoji everywhere, in font development, standard bodies etc. for a miniscule increase in whatever better engagement in chat software actually brings to the societs. In a way that's me getting older, but also the feeling we are exchanging something valuable for colorful (and animated!) icons, also reducing the emotions previously nuancely expressed by language to a placeholder which is subject to interpretation.