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I have been informed, first by the young folks living in my home and more recently by (gasp) CNN, that my usage of the laughing/crying emoji is verifiably uncool. And when I tell you that this is absolutely the least of my concerns as a human being on planet Earth 2021, you can rest assured that I am not exaggerating.
For one thing, I never thought emojis were cool in the first place — how can something that, by its very definition, acts as a generic substitute for the glorious cacophony of human emotion be cool? Isn’t cool all about individuality and authenticity? Doesn’t that preclude using a universal set of pictures as shorthand for word combinations, even when those pictures include vegetables as cheeky and rather evocative stand-ins for sexual overtures?