“I’ve never gotten a serious piece of communication or a message from an adult with an emoji.” His business correspondence, on the other hand, has a tone that doesn’t allow for a smiley face, or even the mustache man. But that’s a conversation with my 14-year-old son.” Lynch said.īruce Feirstein, a screenwriter and journalist living in Los Angeles, seems to agree: “When my 14-year-old son sends me the face palm emoji, I laugh. In other words, if someone sends you an emoji, why not reply in kind? “Why wouldn’t you engage in the same way someone is engaging you?” Mr.
“Second thing is, why wouldn’t they reciprocate?” “The whole ‘should’ reeks of an old-fashioned and hetero-normative view of the world,” he said.
To him, furthermore, the question of whether grown men should use emoji is loaded. “Some people have troubled communication no matter what.” “People can be as creepy using emoji as anything else,” he said.
Stephen Lynch, a 33-year-old public relations professional in San Francisco, holds that emoji are neither good nor bad in themselves. Meaning, she replies with the ghost emoji? What does she do after she receives that one? “It seems like that’s the go-to if a guy can’t come up with something else to say,” Ms. Karlin, she finds the winky face tongue-wagging emoji troublesome, especially when it is sent by men trying to flirt.
He’s pretty hard.” She added that, while she is pro emoji, there are limits. Katey Nilan, a 29-year-old writer and tech consultant in San Francisco, said: “If Drake can emoji, anyone can emoji. To have a man in his 40s and 50s using emojis is uncomfortable to me.” “If I’m seeing a guy, and he emojis, I feel uncomfortable,” said Ms. “If you’re confident in your manhood, you can certainly lapse into Taylor Swift-hood momentarily.”Īmina Akhtar, the editorial director of TheFashionSpot, a website, isn’t buying it. “For a moment you’re Taylor Swift,” said Mr. He has no fear that using them may somehow put a dent in his masculinity. “At some point, texting is kind of stupid.” “I use them because I think they’re stupid,” he said. Gil Schwartz, a CBS executive who writes under the name Stanley Bing, called himself a “rare user of ironic emojis.” He said he is partial to the pig and the horse. Karlin said.Ĭertain men embrace emoji while holding them at a remove. She noted that some men use emoji in ways she finds inscrutable, particularly in the context of romance, when they are given to texting the symbol of the winky face with the tongue sticking out.
“It’s a fine line,” said Melissa Karlin, 35, a Chicago-based accounts manager for Kenshoo, a software company. Other experts (that is, emoji users themselves) are less definitive.
“I’m not known as the most progressive person in the world, but in some ways I like them,” he said. McWhorter, 49, does not use emoji himself, citing his age, he is an admirer. “There should be male ways to use emoji,” he added. Men would benefit from using emoji more.”Įmoji, he said, allow for an expressive, human way of translating the spoken word into text, with the goofy symbols providing a texter or tweeter with the means to convey tone. “But something women start in language has a way of making it to men. “Women tend to be more overtly expressive in language,” he said.