Thanks, everyone. Yes, I understood the history and the way it works, and even that there was Unicode standards in place. What I still don't understand is how the "standard" got to the point of defining what the image should be, but basically not what it looks like. That's the only part that puzzles me.

Like I said, if emoji are supposed to be some form of communication, then I don't understand how you could communicate with someone if you were only speaking similar languages. You'll get the gist of the message, but any subtlety is lost.

Although, I guess I don't ascribe much capability for subtlety to emoji users. So I guess this is all moot.