<rant>

American English speakers, listen up — and, yes, this does tend to be primarily a monolingual American issue, so I’m calling you out. Why? Because languages are more than just twenty-six letters and a few numerals along with words and concepts more complex and expressive than “fuck” with every other utterance.

Sharing a sad tale of fear, isolation, and sorrow and following it with this 🤣 or this 😂 won’t convey the message or meaning that you think it will. Those are “rolling on the floor, laughing” and “tears of joy”.

Unless, of course, you’re a fan of Sadism or perhaps Schadenfreude. Self-schadenfreude? Is that a thing? I’m reminded of a line from Prisoner of Azkaban, “So you’re gonna suffer, but you’re gonna be happy about it.”

If you insist on including a few emojis in your statement, perhaps what you mean to use is this: 😢 or this 😭

And, while I’m at it — because it seems that people still have some difficulty with this new-fangled interwebs-fad and the whole emojis concept — this is the flag of the nation of Liberia: 🇱🇷

While this is the American flag: 🇺🇸

Wow, we really skewed things when we gave Latin/English/Americans an extra 146,859 characters more than the 26 letters in the English alphabet.

</rant>