My 42-year-old boyfriend felt the same way, until one day I made a verbal observation to him that when men include a :-) in a text to a woman, it means he wants to fuck her.
He said, “Yes that’s probably true.”
Over the next couple years he, by now my ex, started using colorful emojis all over the place in desperate Facebook flirting attempts,
because he apparently came to the conclusion that emojis must be chick magnets somehow.
But no, it just made him look like a ___________ (fill in your own adjectives, they’re probably correct).