During January, I will be posting (tentatively) one post every day as part of the #bloganuary challenge
Today’s Prompt: What emoji(s) do you like to use?

Working at Automattic you need to be fond of emojis and Gifs. As a fully distributed company, with about 1900 employees and a culture of written communication, emojis are basically part of your life. They help you to set the tone the person on the other side won’t be able to hear.

I must admit that as a xennial (people who were born on the cusp between Generation X and the millennials) I lean towards written communication way more than talking over the phone or via video call. Ok… A LOT MORE. Please never call me, I won’t answer.

When you communicate mostly via Telegram, Slack and Blog posts (we barely use email in Automattic, we use our own platform called P2) emojis (and Gifs) help a lot. It’s really easy to misinterpret what the other person is saying, even though, by default, we try to always assume good intentions.

However, we are about 1900 people from 96 countries so cultural differences also play a role in communication and that triggered a very interesting post about what each emoji means in different countries.

Some people said they use the heart emoji ❤️ 🧡 💛 💚 💙 💜 🖤 🤍 🤎  to express they care in a non-romantic way while others would never use the heart emoji unless they were talking to their family. Some people use the winky emoji 😉 to replace the thumbs-up 👍 while other people mentioned this is a sign you are flirting in their country 💁‍♀️

So, to answer today’s prompt, I won’t be able to add here my favourite emojis because being a heavy user of Telegram and slack the amount of custom emojis/stickers I use is endless, but narrowing down to only regular emojis, the ones I use the most are:

😅 Sligh embarrassment/discomfort

😜 Self-explanatory (right?)

😏 The perfect end for a sarcastic comment

🤨 Confused/incredulous

🙄 I’ve been using this one a LOT lately because, you know… people…

🤣 Also self-explanatory