And I have had it happen more than once.
I type “:”. Then I am given a choice of emojis. I clearly press smile. I know I do. And every time I get a frown.
The only solution appears to be do it manually then.
Anyone else have the same problem? And is it a bug in the board (so to speak)?
I should make clear, that this only happens when the last choice I made was a frown perhaps. And the smiley is then second on the list.
That’s a smiley in that post… 
Testing…
All did the one I tried for.
You mean if you type a colon by itself, you get some kind of graphical dropdown menu?
Huh… well I’ll be damned.
Can’t imagine using it for 
or 
but for the ones where I don’t actually know the keystroke equiv… 
Ok cool…
I just tried it and all I got were my most recent smileys and a more… link.
Clicking on that brought up exactly what I get by clicking on the smiley icon in the format bar.
Works fine for me. Has marijuana recently been legalized where you live? It’s well known that misuse of smilies are one of the first signs once you start using the killer weed.
I swear to God, I clearly tap on the smile option, and clearly get a frown. And it has happened more than once.
Also, FWIW, I am using a rubber-tipped stylus, for even greater precision of touch.
@mordecaiB Just for the record, I have never smoked cannabis or ever used any other drugs in my life. I am only saying that in response to what you said (serious, half-serious or not ). I have been drinking alcohol basically all my life. But that is another story. And I haven’t been drinking now or when this happened. So that doesn’t apply either .
So, back to my question: why does this happen? And okay, then why does this only seem to happen to me? FWIW it isn’t the only problem. When I try to do it manually, half of the old smiley text still remains. Why?
EDIT: And I am fifty-three now. So the alcohol would not be a legal issue either (as per the SDMB’s policies ).
Wow! Most people have popped an ibuprofen or antibiotic at some point in their life. You must be the perfect picture of health.
Alright, you were joking . But just for future reference, where I live, the term ‘drugs’ implies illegal and/or illicit.
They say Americans and Brits are separated by a common language. Ironically sometimes so are Americans 
.
It’s obviously the stylus.
When my kids were in grade school, being taught that drugs are bad, I explained this to them. A drug is a medicine or other substance which has a physiological effect when ingested or otherwise introduced into the body. I told them that antibiotics, antiinflamatories, insulin, etc are all drugs. I told them that drugs can be misused and that was bad.
They were 5 and 7 at the time and were able to understand the difference.
Emoticons are dweeby, smilies are for kids. I don’t use them. If I can’t relay the intent of my sentence in plain words, I need to rewrite it until it’s clear. Perhaps your experience is trying to tell you something.
Moderator Note
If you don’t like emoticons, that’s fine. But don’t threadshit.
You hurt my feelings. 
Oh, sorry. I guess my high horse threw me. Will watch it.
I noticed this oddity in mobile when using the emoticon chooser in the editor menu. (I don’t usually use the in-line selector.)
My impression is that the first time you use the pop-out selection grid, it’s mis-sized (is short a column or two) and the glyph you get is based on a miscomputed index.
That doesn’t necessarily apply to how it works in the in-line selector, but that’s my observation.
Here’s an attempt to pick an emoji in the fashion I describe.
Looks like it worked this time.
If you are doing this by touching the screen it seems most likely it is not calibrated correctly for your angle of viewing.
Okay, I see no reason to start a new thread for this.
I actually wanted to point out a fact, in case anyone was wondering. Sometimes on these boards, instead of just posting a wink, I post a wink, then smile thus: 
. It is for much the same reason.
I got the impression that some of you noticed this and wondered why. And now you know .
the colon thing works, except I get different emoticons than you, clearly
and engineer_comp_geek those of use who really really like emoticons salute you. it’s not just the cannabis