I’ve just now signed up. The Welcome to Hugo Discussion message contains emoticons. Here’s an emoticon 
visible to me in the preview (as I write).
Apparently (at this time) the configuration setting for reading/seeing emoticons (or perhaps for writing them) seems to be per-user—rather than being set for all users.
As I interpreted this, he’d like emoticons turned off for all users. Is this possible to do, I wonder?