True, I prefer words to emoji — though I’m not a Luddite, I will change my mind the moment you show me emoji that rhyme or play me a track sung in emoji. But everyone agrees that emoji are just a bit of fun, that they quickly convey tone, and that anyway, everyone knows what you mean by an emoji.

All of that is bollocks.

Follow.

I quite often get sent a reply that consists of that icon of a face laughing and with tears running down it. Really? Did I really leave you laughing so hard that you cried? No. The odds are that I either vaguely amused you, or you’re sure I was trying to be funny, even if I failed.

So nope, I don’t know exactly what you meant and I offer that the emoji literally isn’t what you meant. Plus I think people unconsciously assume that the emoji you send me is the emoji I received, and it is not. There is an emoji standards body, but the symbol you see is the one that your device has made to comply to that standard. And the one I see is the symbol the makers of my device have decided.

Now, most of the time, that just means on average one of us is seeing a better version of the smiley face than the other, one team of graphic designers might be better than the other.

But then last year if I were sending you an emoji from an iPhone, Android, PC or Mac, but you were reading it on Twitter, there could be quite the difference. Should I have some reason to send you an emoji about a water pistol — apparently people do this — then I see a cheery water pistol, but you see a handgun. Tell me what tone that was meant to convey.

So emojis look different on different machines and they do not say what you meant. That leaves just the bit about fun and where you may well now be sitting, thinking I’ve segued into being a grump bloke. But you know where this is going and, yes.

Because in 2021, a single and apparently unambiguous thumbs-up emoji ended up costing the sender over $60,000.

There’s a lot to this and the superb podcast 99% Invisible covers it in delicious detail, but the shortest version is that it was over a contract. The person who sent the thumbs up claims he meant to just acknowledge receipt of a message, but the person he sent it to took it to mean an agreement to the deal they were discussing.

That 99% Invisible podcast episode also gives examples of how in different cultures or even just different groups of people, one emoji can mean many different things. And those meanings change over time.

Now, excuse me, I have to go the shops. Checks list: I need aubergine, peach, banana…

And that was going to be the jokey finish. Except I just looked up at my TV set and it’s on the YouTube recommendations page. Of which the recommended video right in front of me is mine, the one I made this week and for which I confidently believe I have made my worst-ever poster image. Yes. It has an emoji. I’d explain, but I want to run away now before you see it.