[IAmBroom]

It's also crap...

> The way we use emoji has changed. In the early days, we were literal: You sent a nail polish emoji () because you were, in fact, getting your nails polished.

The early days of emojis used unpaired parentheses, colons, and semicolons. It's like claiming int the early days of Apple the company released macOS 10.

[thunderfork]

I believe you're referring to emotions, which are a separate and distinct concept/term

[CharlesW]

I believe the point is that emoticons/emoji/kaomoji were never literal, and that it's surprising that anyone whose job is communications-related would say this.