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Why do Lemmy users rarely use emoticons? (lemmy.today)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

267 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Reading comments in different communities, I noticed that users hardly leave smilies. Why is that?

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Emoticons are old internet. Emojis are boomer, normie, and corpo friendly translations.

[–] AFKBRBChocolate 1 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Wait, who was using "old Internet" if not boomers?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The nerds who made the tech.

[–] AFKBRBChocolate 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Psst.. the nerds were mostly boomers...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

I know my one professor used punch cards and worked on some of the data structures. But it was people who cared about how tech worked.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Most boomers I know still can't use a mouse. Millennials and gen X fill most of the old Internet in my mind, but the original '91 Internet was a lot of tech focused boomers, but also was significantly Gen X. '95-'99 seemed to pick up more traction with my generation.

[–] AFKBRBChocolate 2 points 11 months ago

I think it's sample bias. I graduated with a CS degree in 85 and started working as a software engineer in aerospace. It was pretty much all boomers when I started.

There might be more people from later generations who grew up doing their homework on computers, so the disparity between tech folks and non-tech folks in those later generations seems less, but the Internet was mostly created by boomer tech people.

I'm the senior manager of the organization I started in in 85, and I still have boomers working for me.