[aaron5]

had to laugh at your second point - same for me. i was like, "but periods go after sentences, right?" but now i don't do it

the super weird one is (i live in china currently) that there's a smiley face that is not a smiley face. i always used it. i was hip. i was fitting in. my emoticon game was making progress and then apparently i found out i was doing the equivalent of a reddit /s at the end of all my messages: "that smiley face is a fake smile" how could i know that? it's a yellow smiley face! haha

[dwighttk]

A long time ago I decided I’d not use emoji, just smilies, but that went away once I got a smartphone and the emoji keyboard was right there

[junon]

For me, it was when I moved from the US to Germany. Germans do not use "haha" and the like, but instead emojis. A gratuitous amount.

Either you use them or don't, but you have to realize how you come off to the other person (though admittedly this is less of a problem in Germany to begin with - being direkt and monotone is a virtue here sometimes).