Let me be clear: I don't particularly like emoji. I don't even like texting, which apparently is odd for anyone my age or younger. However, I do sometimes text with my wife (although it's more like IM to me since I use the Google Hangouts plugin on my desktop).

I've gotten over the stupidity of emoji but I still have one major problem with them, and one that's never addressed whenever I see an article touting emoji as the next "universal language" or whatever nonsense: they're not all the same!

Yes, if you're an iPhone user texting another iPhone user, you're going to see the same things. Android to Android will be the same thing too. But iPhone to Android is NOT the same. This bothers me immensely. If these things are supposed to be a universal language, then the system is broken because plenty can get lost in "translation." If I'm going to use one of these little pictures to convey a meaning, then very subtle variations can greatly alter that meaning.

So that leads me to ask: who is using the "right" emojis? Is there even such a thing as the "right" emojis? I frequently hear about Apple pushing out new symbols in their updates, but is that just them making up new images and declaring them "the standard?" Believe me, I'm not being platform biased here. If the ones that Google are using are the wrong ones (again, if such a thing can be the case), then I want them to stop using them. It just baffles me that people could try to communicate using similar but different languages. I've stopped using these silly things altogether because I have no idea what's showing up on the other end!

So, who is right? Is anyone?