The point of the emoji at the end was to “add some more feeling/fun to text content,” like if I ended a comment with “I couldn’t stop smiling while writing this.” It’s irrelevant but it changes the flavor of the text.
Besides that, many lemmy users are on the spectrum and will read “Donald Trump is known for his great border policies” in a comment that it’s clear they’re joking, and they will still have -5 score and comments arguing with them until the poster says “it was a joke.” Compare that to “Donald Trump is known for his great border policies 🤡” or 🙄 or 💀 depending on how obvious you want to be. It’s just a tool that can be misused or annoying like anything else.
Yeah I think it’s just some people are not trying to “communicate” rather they’re just doing it because it’s fun for them (and some others). Sort of the “talking because they like to talk.” I used to also be pretty annoyed by it but I had a friend use them all the time and sort of just got used to it. Even if it did still annoy me I don’t like to ruin someone’s fun, so I’ll just be a bit mad and carry on (and then complain to other people it annoys)