People were bothered by variation in the form of the dancer emoji because it was serving as an emblem, and emblems add their own separate meaning to the words they go with. But people were unruffled by variation in the form of the birthday cake emoji because it’s an illustration, and illustrative emoji instead highlight and reinforce a topic that’s already present. It’s okay if illustrators aren’t quite exactly on target: the surrounding words will provide enough context to interpret them correctly.
