so I should be suspicious of the guys on hinge who are clearly using more emoji than average/others, because it's another way to engender a false familiarity? ;) i mean like, this is both a facetious question but NOT a facetious question!
It's in-group signaling. "Do we speak the same slang." Use of emoji is linguistically similar to wearing team jerseys or referencing the same regional foods and trends. They're expressing themselves in the media they are familiar with, which has the effect of attracting partners equally familiar (or aspirationally familiar) with their patois. "Prejudice" is a pejorative way of saying "classification." Much of stranger relations is determining what boxes to check for every new individual we meet and humans are inventive as to how that perform that classification.