Digital communications have always been somewhat socially handicapped. The recent trend of emojis merges immediacy with intimacy in such a way that drains context and strips nuance, unlike the conventional written and typed communiqués.
Remember the time when everyone was worried that text-speak was killing the English language? To my surprise, at one point high school examiners in some of the places even started allowing students to write essays with the shortened words as they were afraid that the students couldn’t spell. And now...