All of which is to say: The 3,000-year-old tilde might want to consider rebranding itself as Invisible Man With Twirled Mustache. I t’s easy to dismiss emoji. They are, at first glance, ridiculous.

Over the past several years, emojis have become an integral part of popular culture, so much so that the Oxford Dictionary named the face with tears of joy emoji as the 2015 Word of the Year.