Yeah. I think reactions emojis are just the gen-z version of the subject line:

RE: Here are the plans. Ack <eom>

In that sense they basically make sense and it should be unmysterious that people want them.

> I think reactions emojis are just the gen-z version

Every time someone tells that something I use and enjoy is "the gen-z version" of something, I'm getting worried: is it me trying to keep-up with the cool kids?

Having a few "gen-z" in my team, I quickly came to the conclusion that trying to profile them in a single group was silly: they all behave differently, like every human ever did.

As someone squarely in gen y. I've had the same feelings about me doing stuff that others are associating with gen z.

I think there may be two things at play here. One is that some people are just bad at adapting to social shifts and assume that everyone is the same way as them. The other is that people have gotten loose with usage of generation terms. So for some older people "gen z" = "person younger than me", while for some younger people "boomer" = "person older than me"

And both of those are problems with the speaker, so now I just ignore them and happily keep on doing the "gen z" things.

FWIW I mean just as a thing that gen-z popularized, I don’t think they think they own the idea (well, I hope they don’t, I’m not gen-z and I use them).

Anyway, the oldest gen-z is just about pushing 30 now, so they get to join us lame people with sore backs.

Thanks for your perspective, I must say that I agree with you

That Mail is very different from reactions. A nice thing is that outlook can simply sum up the reactions and show them along the message in a non-intrusive way.

A Mail, even with just a subject takes a lot more space and leads somebody to answer to it which messes up the thread.

> A nice thing is that outlook can simply sum up the reactions and show them along the message in a non-intrusive way.

Yeah, that's why I came to like the feature. It's even visible at two places: in the thread list and on an individual email.

The only downside for now: the choice of emoji is too limited. I want my eggplant emoji! But given the history in Teams, where they started with a limited set of emojis, before adding all of them and finally allowing custom ones, I guess it's coming!

The emoji adds some new functionality for sure. That’s just the nature of iterative improvement, right?

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