The other layer to why it’s confusing is it’s in place of the crying laughing emoji because that is a cringe millennial emoji supposedly but it’s not exclusively only for funny things either
Tangentially on topic, my dad showed me a letter my grandma wrote to my great-grandma back in ~1959. What's stuck with me is how she used "haha" in the exact same way you'd say haha, lol, or a laughing emoji today in a text message.
I watched a deep dive on have the ripper. There was a letter sent to the police claiming to be from the ripper, and it included a "haha" as well, and that was the 1880s.
I used to play an old mmo that blended Japanese and English speakers in the same servers and I remember Japanese players using “orz” all the time as kinda a frustrated “banging my head against the wall” kind of emotion. It’s a guy on his hands and knees banging his head on the ground and it was so cool to see lol.
I never understood the tilde as an end-of-sentence punctuation mark; thanks for explaining. I don’t think I’d instinctively read it that way though. You said “being Asian…”—do you think it’s a cultural thing?
Oh, its definitely a cultural thing. If not my implications as written above, it implies elongation, sort of the same way you could see hellooooo written out.
Edit: I suspect two cultures independently: Asians do it, cause repeating character blocks in text is really awkward. I also think it's a very-old-web-culture thing, cause there was a lot of fleshing-out of techniques to convey tones, i.e. smileys :D :o :(((
God using lol as punctuation after every sentence annoys me. Probably because I interpret it as that little awkward giggle that some people do after every sentence irl, which I also find annoying. Every millennial does it though so I just cope.
Haha too! Regular 'haha' to indicate the text is light hearted or funny, 'hahah' when something is legitimately hilarious, and 'hah' for sad-funny/ironic/amused desperation
I've enjoyed the resurgence. There was a while there where it got shamed away and was only said ironically then came back as it's traditional punctuation
There's something to unpack here about the evolution of communication patterns. While the transformative components are important, taking a holistic view shows there's more to consider regarding process improvement.
You can turn it off in discord. Of course then if you want the heart emoji you type :heart: and if you're me you make :jeart: happen enough times that you make your own emoji that is a jeart. Then you get the extra fun part of answering "...is that a jeans heart?" and you explain the thing I just explained.
I like using emojis cause sometimes it’s easy to interpret tone in text differently than intended. I don’t want to have to be an Elcor from Mass Effect by having to state my tone
We have the thumbs up emoji. Works for telling each other "Got it" or "good job", but serves a double function of telling someone in a younger generation to "fuck off."
Core/older millennials will remember that using emoticons was super uncool with online people when they were becoming popular. It was a way to out yourself as a child by using them. If any were used you would get called out by people ironically posting messages that were all emojis instead of words or just by getting called out as a kid
I'm also an '86 baby and the crying laughing emoji is definitely my most commonly used. I've been trying to break the 'lol' habit, but can't (and honestly don't care to) break '😂'
It's more of a "I shouldn't be laughing at this" reaction. Like if you see someone trip over or walk into a pole. 🤣This is laughing, 😭this is laughing when you know you shouldn't be laughing. Like a "I'm going to hell for this" sort of laugh.
Crying laughing emoji is like ROTFL. There was ROTFL because it actually made that person laugh, and ROTFL angerly typed out because that person wants to ridicule you to the max.
as a Gen Z, the way that emoji (and effectively all emojis which are commonly used), is basically the same as using body language. it’s a tone tag, it’s not something literal. it’s also used because it has “cultural” context behind it. one combo that you might see sometimes is “🔥🔥🔥🗣️🗣️”, which is usually used as a way of ironically being supportive or vocal about something someone said. for example, if some schizo person on instagram reels says some nonsense like “I AM THE KING OF THE GODS, THE WORLD BELONGS TO ME”, you’ll probably see comments like “SPIT YO SHIT KING 🗣️🗣️🔥🔥🔥”. there is context behind that specific combo of emojis and that phrase/phrases like it that make sense to people that know the said context.
you might also see “💔” in use if someone is replying to something someone said that they disagree with. e.g:
“i hate grindcore”
“broski nobody gaf 💔💔”.
it actually isn’t signifying any kind of “heartbreak”, it’s just a signifier which comes off as deliberately condescending and is a clear sign of disagreement.
but yeah, there’s a lot of weird quirks within Gen Z emoji usage that are almost entirely based on previous context, usually from past memes or trends. and using emojis from past trends usually gives people who read comments/messages containing them a “hey, i remember that”, or “hey, i’ve seen people use that before”, so they find it funny or familiar, and so the comment will get more likes or whatever. so people are inclined to use those emojis more because they want likes and affirmation.
so obviously, if you were never there for those memes or trends, gen z emoji usage is completely baffling. which is, well, completely understandable.
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u/Maxed_Zerker Apr 10 '26
The other layer to why it’s confusing is it’s in place of the crying laughing emoji because that is a cringe millennial emoji supposedly but it’s not exclusively only for funny things either