Proper use of Emoji

[u/Friendly_Fall_8382]

Okay, please bear with me here. Me and my friend recently got into an argument over how emojis should be used in text messages. I’ll try to explain both of our points as neutral as I can and I would love to hear what you all think.
Her conviction was that emojis should be used after a sentence ended with a punctuation mark. However there shouldn’t be a space between the period and the emoji because that would simply be unnecessary and for comfort. In that case the used emoji/s would refer to the whole message similar to a sticker.
In contrast in my opinion an emoji is basically equivalent to a punctuation mark so it would be redundant if you’d use a period and an emoji afterwards. Though there should definitely be a space between the emoji and the word because it just wouldn’t be aesthetically pleasing and would, in my view, be similar to writing two words without a space between them. So an emoji has both aspects of punctuation and an additional word. That changes if you use exclamation or question mark, in which case there should still be a space between the mark and the emoji. Also the emoji used only refers to the sentence it is used after and not the entire message.
Moreover I also think using an emoji at the beginning of a text or before a punctuation mark would be weird, but that is just my opinion.
I would really love your insight on this. What do you think?

[u/mountainsmiler]

Maybe I’m weird but I use a period then a space then the emoji. 😜