Getting rid of the emoji pop-up in Messenger

Like everyone else I know, in Messenger, when going to scroll any sent message, the list of 7 emojis will pop up about half a second after I touch the message. If I don't move fast enough, I'll leave an accidental and in some cases highly inappropriate emoji on the message.

I don't really do emojis, so is there a way to turn that behavior off entirely? Or can I set up an alternate app, preferably one that will communicate with Facebook about users and all that?

I'm apparently running Messenger version 152.0.0.17.94 on Andriod 7.0 on a Moto X Pure.

If this is covered elsewhere, please just point me there. I can't figure out how to search for messages.