Mrs AC keeps messaging me with that one - it scares me. It’s horrible.
Edited now.
… we’z is lightenin’’ up, but they ain’t no fun
Course they are, get down wid de kids … or in my case, de grandkids.
It’s all good, just open de mind. 
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I agree, they have a place in forums and other online discussions, simply because they are discussions, not essays. I think they require a different syntax to other forms of written communication to compensate for the fact that you can’t read the tone of voice and facial expressions that enrich a face to face conversation. An emoji can be an effective way to achieve this. All the more so for some of the people for whom English is a second language.
Exploding sausage, anyone…
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At an average age of between 50 and 70 we should be able to communicate without using pictures, by no means am I one of the longest users of this forum but even I can remember a time when we all spoke to one another without them but so far it seems I’m in the minority here and have been shown up to be a bit of an old crusty by all of you ‘funsters’ out there.
I’m with you on this and rarely if ever use them. If it takes an emoji to make something clear, it perhaps should have been written more clearly in the first place.
Yes and no @Bobthebuilder. IMHO internet fora/forums are full of potential misinterpretations due to the manner in which text is written.
The Naim forum genuinely appears to be quite civilised but I occasionally visit Pistonheads and goodness me, it’s full of trolls/handbag’s at dawn types and all sorts in-between.
My use of emojis stems from my OU degree where they encouraged them to make no mistake about the writer’s intent. It’s stuck since 
At a time when everyone seems to take offense at everything, it’s a reasonable way to operate. I’m just learning from my children that ending posts/texts/messages with full stops is rude nowadays… 
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Most emojis are far from clear in their meaning. Yes, you can get the gist of quite a few of them - but beyond some unspecified degree of happiness or sadness etc., there is little that they add. When I started with computing (back in the 1960s) we would use things like : - ) to convey a smile, or some level of amusement, but there are so many emojis now that it is impossible to know what they mean. And they do, when used too much, clutter up the text rather unpleasantly. And I really don’t understand the purpose of repeating the same emoji - 
- I have no idea what that is supposed to convey.
A few (a very few) emojis are OK, but I can’t say that I like messages with more than a couple or so in them
I think that emojis are fine, so long as they are not over-used and abused. Sometimes it’s difficult for even the best writers of English to fully express themselves in the same way as they would if the conversation were face to face. likewise for someone on the receiving end. We tend to take for granted how much of a face to face conversation is actually not expressed in words, but rather through our eyes and our facial expression. Also bear in mind that for a great many on this forum, English is not a first language, and you begin to understand why sometimes some posts, particular those meant to be humorous in some way, might be taken the wrong way. So anything that assists in comprehension or understanding is welcome, and emojis can go some way to filling the gap here.
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That’s an excellent example of how useless, or even worse than useless, emojis can be!
I don’t know I think it’s the only one I have a little sympathy for.
It is very German. The British tend to use more emotions related to reproduction.
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I look at it and simply wonder what it is supposed to mean. Chocolote ice cream, with stick-on eyes and mouth, or animated, smiling chocolate ice cream, or same but a pile of sh1t not chocolate ice cream - and whichever it is I’m left clueless as to what is it trying to convey. At least a smiling face conveys happiness or pleasure, while a sad smiley conveys sadness, and about two or three others convey meaning. As for the infamous exploding sausage, no-one has ever explained that one!
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Not sure I’ve seen many that do, or at least not stuck in memory, so I don’t think common anywhere I look.
While I do, on some level, agree that emojis are annoying, I still see them serve a function…
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Not everybody here has English as their first language (or whatever language is predominant in a given forum), and even if they had, cultural differences have a profound impact on what is construed as funny and what is not. I may not agree with you that what you wrote was funny or sarcastic or whatnot, but by means of emojis I can at least tell if there is some underlying tone even if I don’t get it specifically. A marker, if you will.
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Another thing is brevity. The Naim forum is relatively narrow in terms of topics, but if you look at other forums where topics have a wider reach, I find emojis to be a nice aid when skimming entries. To get the hidden tones and messages, I’d have to read it in more detail.
Of course, having different emojis between platforms inevitably makes it difficult to navigate their meanings. Many of them are obviously just there because an illustrator thought it would be fun to make a vampire santa with a pink umrella and cucumber in his ear.
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I sometimes post one or two cats 
depending on how many are present whilst posting, my large ginger is reading this as Im typing it.
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Oddly enough I’ve just thought of using this. I’ve been invited to take part in a large study on COVID, which includes taking home blood and stool samples. Looking at the FAQs they link to a video showing you how to take a stool sample. Messaging a friend to tell them I wasn’t planning to watch said video I thought of Bob’s use of this emoji.