I wouldn’t be unhappy to see the status quo remain with perhaps the only change being the spelled out thank you replaced with an emoji, though there seems to be a lack of consensus about which one is actually good for thank you. I have no idea what the fuss is, but apparently there’s significant disagreement on when is admissible. Here it’s invoked with :pray which makes obvious sense to me, but macOS emoji picker will show it when you search for thank you, which I believe is how I mostly see it used.
And now that I say that, I see that here if you type :thanks it will also show . Clear as mud.
Me three. (I’d use the thumbs up emoji if it were still there…) ;-)
As long as we’ve resurrected this, my vote is still to have the thumbs up to indicate agreement, the heart to indicate good post, the happy face for that was funny, and–well, despite what I just said, I can’t think of a good emoji for thanks, so I guess the text icon with the words is the best we’ve got. As @Simon said, the praying hands/high five emoji is kinda skunked in terms of being unambiguous.
Well, this is annoying. It turns out that it’s either difficult or impossible to avoid the reaction as the default for “good post,” so there’s no point in trying to add a textmoji for that, and is fine for indicating that something is amusing.
If we have to mix emoji and textmoji, the two that make sense to me as textmoji are and .
My distaste for emoji has been stated before but I’m happy to roll with the well established variants of heart for like, and smilie for amusing. I like the text for ‘agree’ and ‘thanks’ as they’re unambiguous.
I never quite understood the praying hands for thanks — maybe it’s my atheism
My guess is that since “thank you” probably was one of the first emojis, the clasped hands are a reflection of emojis’ Asian origins. In fact, the very name emoji probably is a portmanteau of emotion and kanji, no?
I would assume it’s related to the Japanese’ itadakimasu, a phrase said and a gesture made before eating, symbolizing gratitude (per my limited understanding, I’m sure fellow posters living in Japan can offer more detail).
“When saying itadakimasu, both hands are put together in front of the chest or on the lap.”
I’ve worked and traveled in Japan a lot, but frankly I never observed the gesture all that much, even in private settings. In Thailand OTOH the gesture can be seen all the time, it’s the wai which is used as a greeting, but also as a sign of apology or gratitude.
Perhaps related, is that in Shinto shrines in Japan silently clapping together hands can also be seen, the hakushu, but this is definitely a ceremonial gesture as part of prayer. Apparently it links to Buddhism, although not performed by Buddhists outside Japan (I’ll never understand the complicated relationship/interplay between Shinto and Buddhism in Japan).
My favorite combination with “moji” is “mojibake”, corrupted characters. That is what happens when you choose the wrong encoding, like displaying EUC in ShiftJIS. Not so common now that we are all Unicode, but fun to say, especially if you lean into the consonants.
is admissible. Here it’s invoked with :pray which makes obvious sense to me, but macOS emoji picker will show it when you search for thank you, which I believe is how I mostly see it used.
reaction as the default for “good post,” so there’s no point in trying to add a textmoji for that, and 
is fine for indicating that something is amusing.
and 
.