And these personified emojis go completely against the grain of iconification. Graphical icons become more culturally universal the less detailed they are. The standard example is that the :) emoji is seen by everyone as being of their own race, yet we have to have skin-tone variations on these highly detailed sorts of emojis to have the same level of inclusion of the traditional version.

I've noticed this in app stores recently. The vast majority of games have these highly detailed, action oriented icons. It's impossible to pick one out from the other. They all look like they've been made by the same company.

Just because we have high-resolution displays, doesn't mean we have to use all of those pixels.