[Jedd]

Do you mean the way that Microsoft hijacked open-parenthesis, and you can't choose a different character to trigger an emoji call?

[lifescarcity]

https://youtu.be/2PYBj_VhvXg?si=eQogTv825zSyeBvX You can use :

[vladvasiliu]

Which is extremely practical for French, where the colon comes after a space. So if you want to write an actual colon to introduce a list on the following line, you’ll just input whatever the default smiley is.

[Jedd]

aha - they've added colon.

I notice that ( still goes into emoji mode though.

So, the worst of both worlds. I should not be surprised. (And I am not.)