In the beginning, there were emoticons. For the most part, these came of age as the 🙂 and 🙁 and 8-D of chatroom conversations in the 1990s. These primitive gestures represented an important part of early netspeak: You could convey sarcasm by tacking on 😉 at the end of your message, or share your ambivalence with the ¯_(ツ)_/¯ face. When Shigetaka Kurita created the first emoji in 1999, he had to work within a grid measuring 12 by 12 pixels.