Emoji originally came from Docomo phones in Japan around 1999. (Or I think those were the first ones actually called "emoji"; some other earlier devices had similar character sets.)
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^_^
Ah the halcyon days of feelin' pompous for using random squigglies to convey emotion.
Still remember being scandalized by the flip table emoticon using characters I couldn't find on my keyboard. So jealous I had to ...
(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
well, not that actually. just paste, I guess.
