Intelligence comes in more forms than just written language. Words can express emotion, but so can dance, painting, singing, even a glance can express so much. Why do you think it needs to stop at emoji’s? Your inability to understand what they are saying with that emoji is not a failure of the emoji, but your ability to interpret it. That’s like saying dancing doesn’t convey emotion because you don’t know what it is they are trying to convey. Perhaps you just need to learn more ways of expressing emotions?