First they came for ‘LOL’, and we let it happen.

Now they’re replacing entire sentences on WhatsApp, and the scourge of the emoji is no longer limited to teens alone.

Anyway, I’m anti-emoji, because I feel like words were invented for a reason, but if you are prone to throwing some of those cry-face-laughing things around you might have noticed a shift in how they’re being used.

Thanks to Emojipedia, which is a real thing, we can track how often emojis are viewed on that site. Emojipedia Editor in Chief Jeremy Burge says that “page view data tends to track fairly closely to usage on public platforms such as Facebook and Twitter”, so it’s the most reliable data source we have to go on.

Go on Mashable, tell us what’s up:

…while the Tears of Joy emoji [that’s the one above] is still popular, its use seems to have peaked in early 2017. These days, people are turning less and less to our jovial friend and more and more to its coked-up Dadaist cousin: Rolling on the Floor Laughing [below].

Whereas Tears of Joy invited you to share in a moment of brief respite from the madness all around, ROFL demands that you throw caution to the wind and embrace the chaos with absurdity-fueled arms. When Tears of Joy suggested that, just perhaps, there may have been a reason for laughter in the world, ROFL laughs at the world itself…

A graph from Emojipedia helps to put things in perspective. TOJ is still kicking ROFL’s ass in terms of pure numbers (so all you ride or die TOJers out there can breathe easy), but even with society collapsing in on itself we can still see which way the emoji winds are blowing.

Here is said graph:

Wow. Riveting stuff.

I’m actually, literally, crying.

I want it on the record that a little piece of me died while writing this.

[source:mashable]