Emojis are people, my friend.
May 20, 2017 1:45 PM Subscribe
Google’s 18-Month Quest To Redesign Its Terrible Emoji
Google is notorious for having some of the worst emoji on the planet. Now it’s righting its wrongs–and taking on gender stereotypes, too. [...] It isn’t just a design overhaul of the (melting, yellow) elephant (dung) in the room, though. It also addresses deeper problems within Google’s emoji set: As Google has made its emoji people more realistic, the company had to completely rethink how–and why–it represents people the way it does. (😁 previously.)
I appreciate the work on countering gender stereotypes but am I insane for much much much preferring the Android emoji to the Apple ones? Those gumdrops are adorable, and I'm going to miss them.
posted by dis_integration at 2:02 PM on May 20, 2017 [72 favorites]
posted by dis_integration at 2:02 PM on May 20, 2017 [72 favorites]
Aw, I miss the gumdrops. I thought they were really expressive (even more so than the other OS' versions).
posted by airmail at 2:02 PM on May 20, 2017 [17 favorites]
posted by airmail at 2:02 PM on May 20, 2017 [17 favorites]
I guess that I thought that was just what emojis looked like but I'll admit that I never really paid much attention to them.
posted by octothorpe at 2:09 PM on May 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by octothorpe at 2:09 PM on May 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
Please tell me there's finally a sandwich emoji. The first company to innovate on this wins my 2017 award for the obvious.
posted by iamkimiam at 2:09 PM on May 20, 2017
posted by iamkimiam at 2:09 PM on May 20, 2017
I really like the grids, is sensible and also demonstrates how complicated something so seemingly simple can be.
posted by iamkimiam at 2:12 PM on May 20, 2017
posted by iamkimiam at 2:12 PM on May 20, 2017
I'm usually Team Apple 💯%, but I've always been sort of jealous of the gumdrops.
posted by roger ackroyd at 2:17 PM on May 20, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by roger ackroyd at 2:17 PM on May 20, 2017 [4 favorites]
But the gumdrop blobs (gumblops?) are so cute and squishy!!
Also, artistically, the gumdrop blobs are much simpler than the new versions, which have introduced line strokes and...gradients...
posted by loquacious crouton at 2:17 PM on May 20, 2017 [11 favorites]
Also, artistically, the gumdrop blobs are much simpler than the new versions, which have introduced line strokes and...gradients...
posted by loquacious crouton at 2:17 PM on May 20, 2017 [11 favorites]
I personally have difficulty seeing emoji. Old eyes, I guess. But also I think a lot of the complexity of emoji get lost when squished down to tiny resolutions.
posted by rebent at 2:20 PM on May 20, 2017 [7 favorites]
posted by rebent at 2:20 PM on May 20, 2017 [7 favorites]
NO WHAT
SHUT YOUR MOUTH THE GUMDROPS WERE THE BEST
I even switched my Slack emoji display to Android despite being on iOS & MacOS because they were more expressive and cuter than Apple's, and am frustrated that I can't make this a system-wide change
The new ones are BORING
posted by divabat at 2:24 PM on May 20, 2017 [27 favorites]
SHUT YOUR MOUTH THE GUMDROPS WERE THE BEST
I even switched my Slack emoji display to Android despite being on iOS & MacOS because they were more expressive and cuter than Apple's, and am frustrated that I can't make this a system-wide change
The new ones are BORING
posted by divabat at 2:24 PM on May 20, 2017 [27 favorites]
The old emoji are so far superior to the new ones that I can't believe this was even contemplated. Apple emojis look like Zwinky figurines to me. But I guess the Farmville aesthetic is familiar.
posted by Svejk at 2:33 PM on May 20, 2017 [6 favorites]
posted by Svejk at 2:33 PM on May 20, 2017 [6 favorites]
Yeah, I also find the old emojis much more distinctive and enjoyable than the new ones. But Google always has to change a bunch of stuff in Android every 16 months for whatever reason.
posted by selfnoise at 2:34 PM on May 20, 2017 [7 favorites]
posted by selfnoise at 2:34 PM on May 20, 2017 [7 favorites]
I have an iPhone and a family which prefers to use Hangouts. I'll send a long string of emoji which looks great and funny on my phone. Then when I fire up Hangouts on my desktop and see the messages I sent, the gumdrop emojis kinda fill me with horror. They seem to change my original meaning into something cruder.
So one vote against the gumdrops. I'm glad they're going away.
posted by honestcoyote at 2:35 PM on May 20, 2017 [8 favorites]
So one vote against the gumdrops. I'm glad they're going away.
posted by honestcoyote at 2:35 PM on May 20, 2017 [8 favorites]
Not only have I seen a lot of people defending them since this was announced, I'm baffled because I'm a longtime Android user and I've never once heard anybody complain about the existing ones, like, while I was actually chatting with them. They call them the worst emoji on the planet without citing anything about whether this is in fact a commonly-held belief. I'm sure they aren't to everybody's taste, but I felt like they fit very well with Android as a whole.
The thing that fascinates me about this, because of that, is that gradient. That gradient speaks volumes. It matches precisely nothing of Android's current design sensibilities. Android O is still, as far as I can tell, on Material and its only gradient usage is for stuff like shadows. They don't say anything about other changes, but is this the first face of what's to come?
I'm not sure I'm ready for gradients like that to become the next big thing. They look pretty hideous. Round faces with flat colors would have been fine; these? No.
posted by Sequence at 2:37 PM on May 20, 2017 [8 favorites]
The thing that fascinates me about this, because of that, is that gradient. That gradient speaks volumes. It matches precisely nothing of Android's current design sensibilities. Android O is still, as far as I can tell, on Material and its only gradient usage is for stuff like shadows. They don't say anything about other changes, but is this the first face of what's to come?
I'm not sure I'm ready for gradients like that to become the next big thing. They look pretty hideous. Round faces with flat colors would have been fine; these? No.
posted by Sequence at 2:37 PM on May 20, 2017 [8 favorites]
What? No. The gumdrops are awesome and the worst emojis are obviously from Samsung. They use a pair of saltines to mean “cookie”.
posted by migurski at 2:44 PM on May 20, 2017 [12 favorites]
posted by migurski at 2:44 PM on May 20, 2017 [12 favorites]
The chocolate chips in that Facebook cookie look like disease.
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:50 PM on May 20, 2017
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:50 PM on May 20, 2017
I am surprised how offended I am by the article. It sucks, because I used to think emojis were fun and expressive and now I feel like it's just another front in some bullshit culture war I want nothing to do with.
I think I will go back to using emoticons.
posted by glonous keming at 2:53 PM on May 20, 2017 [16 favorites]
I think I will go back to using emoticons.
posted by glonous keming at 2:53 PM on May 20, 2017 [16 favorites]
Why do you need a sandwich when there is a rice ball? 🍙
Also I am not sure about Korean but the words for cracker and cookie in Chinese are the same. Maybe for Samsung that's accurate?
posted by 1adam12 at 3:07 PM on May 20, 2017 [4 favorites]
Also I am not sure about Korean but the words for cracker and cookie in Chinese are the same. Maybe for Samsung that's accurate?
posted by 1adam12 at 3:07 PM on May 20, 2017 [4 favorites]
The best app I've stumbled on in quite a while is the Android Look of Disapproval app, that has a ton of emoticons like ಠ_ಠ and ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ that you copy with a click and paste into texts and emails. I use it far more than those fancy emojis (that never look the same from platform to platform).
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:07 PM on May 20, 2017 [15 favorites]
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:07 PM on May 20, 2017 [15 favorites]
Does this mean they are getting rid of the adorable little cat and tiger ones? Most of my emoji use is cat-related, also you can readily say "horse horse tiger tiger"/ma ma hu hu, which is a big favorite around my house.
posted by Frowner at 3:20 PM on May 20, 2017 [7 favorites]
posted by Frowner at 3:20 PM on May 20, 2017 [7 favorites]
I also love the gumdrop emojis but my allegiance is teetering towards team Telegram stickers.
posted by sevenyearlurk at 3:38 PM on May 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by sevenyearlurk at 3:38 PM on May 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
WHAT?!! The Native Hut is a .... rice ball? No, no, no.
I frequently retreat to my native hut.
posted by kestralwing at 3:45 PM on May 20, 2017 [9 favorites]
I frequently retreat to my native hut.
posted by kestralwing at 3:45 PM on May 20, 2017 [9 favorites]
Yep, another vote for the gumdrops. Sad that even in the current set they made the heart eyes less uncontrollably expressive than it was in the last iteration, but it's still much better than the dull as dishwater apple set.
posted by ominous_paws at 3:49 PM on May 20, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by ominous_paws at 3:49 PM on May 20, 2017 [2 favorites]
I only got my first smartphone a year ago. I honestly thought emojis looked the same for everyone, like they were standardized by a global emoji consortium, or something. I did sort of wonder why such a thing would exist, but I never gave it much thought.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 3:49 PM on May 20, 2017 [7 favorites]
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 3:49 PM on May 20, 2017 [7 favorites]
Unicode is the global emoji consortium, they also do letters
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 3:52 PM on May 20, 2017 [5 favorites]
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 3:52 PM on May 20, 2017 [5 favorites]
Pretty much every emoji set is better than Apple's over-gradiented eyesores.
posted by Pyry at 3:57 PM on May 20, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by Pyry at 3:57 PM on May 20, 2017 [3 favorites]
Please tell me there's finally a sandwich emoji. The first company to innovate on this wins my 2017 award for the obvious.
🥪 odds are this looks just like a square, at least until the second half of 2017
http://emojipedia.org/sandwich/
posted by randomkeystrike at 4:00 PM on May 20, 2017 [2 favorites]
Unicode is the global emoji consortium, they also do letters
I mean, I figured they were all encoded the same way, I just didn't realize the artwork was proprietary.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 4:04 PM on May 20, 2017
I mean, I figured they were all encoded the same way, I just didn't realize the artwork was proprietary.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 4:04 PM on May 20, 2017
I'm so old I remember when a smiley face emoji was a colon, hyphen, and right parenthesis and that's what you saw when someone sent you one. For that matter I'm so old that I remember if you sent someone that they'd be like WTF, is your keyboard broken?
posted by Bringer Tom at 4:09 PM on May 20, 2017 [11 favorites]
posted by Bringer Tom at 4:09 PM on May 20, 2017 [11 favorites]
If you fail to get your message across because you rely on some silly image, it might not be the image's fault.
posted by farlukar at 4:16 PM on May 20, 2017 [8 favorites]
posted by farlukar at 4:16 PM on May 20, 2017 [8 favorites]
I'm so glad this thread has become the Gumdrop Android Emoji Fan Club. I would like to become a card-carrying member, please!
My vote for worst emoji go to Microsoft. The Windows 10 emojis mostly look hideous to me.
posted by chrominance at 4:31 PM on May 20, 2017 [3 favorites]
My vote for worst emoji go to Microsoft. The Windows 10 emojis mostly look hideous to me.
posted by chrominance at 4:31 PM on May 20, 2017 [3 favorites]
I think the gumdrops look stupid. I welcome this change, despite living in the Apple ecosystem.
posted by SansPoint at 4:31 PM on May 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by SansPoint at 4:31 PM on May 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
Then when I fire up Hangouts on my desktop and see the messages I sent, the gumdrop emojis kinda fill me with horror. They seem to change my original meaning into something cruder.
This. Everytime I use a facial-expression emoji in Google I feel compelled to amend or retract, because that's NOT what I meant. It's fine if you're trying to be cute 24/7, I suppose.
More broadly, and probably controversially, I'm really not a fan of this "make different skin color versions of each human emoji" either, which I think Apple started? I've no doubt it's a well-intentioned idea, but I think it goes off the rails in the wrong direction.
When texting, I'm now always considering "What color should I consider myself or this person?" when before I wasn't thinking about color at all, just the idea of a person. You might argue this is good for race relations, maybe, if you think every conversation should be about race. I much prefered the higher level, neutral, human beings are all the same system, though.
If yellow wasn't neutral enough, they should have made them all gray. LeGuinMojis.
posted by rokusan at 4:37 PM on May 20, 2017 [7 favorites]
This. Everytime I use a facial-expression emoji in Google I feel compelled to amend or retract, because that's NOT what I meant. It's fine if you're trying to be cute 24/7, I suppose.
More broadly, and probably controversially, I'm really not a fan of this "make different skin color versions of each human emoji" either, which I think Apple started? I've no doubt it's a well-intentioned idea, but I think it goes off the rails in the wrong direction.
When texting, I'm now always considering "What color should I consider myself or this person?" when before I wasn't thinking about color at all, just the idea of a person. You might argue this is good for race relations, maybe, if you think every conversation should be about race. I much prefered the higher level, neutral, human beings are all the same system, though.
If yellow wasn't neutral enough, they should have made them all gray. LeGuinMojis.
posted by rokusan at 4:37 PM on May 20, 2017 [7 favorites]
According to the article, one of the guys working on this is called Gus Fonts. Nominative determinism suggests he ought to know something about the design of communication symbols.
posted by 1head2arms2legs at 4:37 PM on May 20, 2017 [5 favorites]
posted by 1head2arms2legs at 4:37 PM on May 20, 2017 [5 favorites]
😐
posted by mazola at 4:39 PM on May 20, 2017 [7 favorites]
posted by mazola at 4:39 PM on May 20, 2017 [7 favorites]
Google also touched up its new female professions.
Somewhat unfortunate phrasing there. But good to see the effort.
posted by freya_lamb at 4:48 PM on May 20, 2017 [3 favorites]
Somewhat unfortunate phrasing there. But good to see the effort.
posted by freya_lamb at 4:48 PM on May 20, 2017 [3 favorites]
It's not even the first FPP about the differences between emojis on different platforms.
posted by Rainbo Vagrant at 4:58 PM on May 20, 2017
posted by Rainbo Vagrant at 4:58 PM on May 20, 2017
> I'm really not a fan of this "make different skin color versions of each human emoji" either
+1
I noticed recently that Slack has a set which are animated and just cycle through all the available skin colours, which I interpreted as the outcome of a (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ on the design team somewhere. Sadly, the thumbs up/down ones do not lose a finger when they go through the yellow part of the cycle.
posted by merlynkline at 5:01 PM on May 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
+1
I noticed recently that Slack has a set which are animated and just cycle through all the available skin colours, which I interpreted as the outcome of a (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ on the design team somewhere. Sadly, the thumbs up/down ones do not lose a finger when they go through the yellow part of the cycle.
posted by merlynkline at 5:01 PM on May 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
rokusan: I could be wrong because I am becoming an Old, but I heard a rumor that choosing the whitest emoji was a specifically racist act of signaling. I personally qualify as translucent so I used them at first, but if they've been ruined like Pepe, well, that's that.
posted by Countess Elena at 5:01 PM on May 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by Countess Elena at 5:01 PM on May 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
When texting, I'm now always considering "What color should I consider myself or this person?" when before I wasn't thinking about color at all, just the idea of a person. You might argue this is good for race relations, maybe, if you think every conversation should be about race. I much prefered the higher level, neutral, human beings are all the same system, though.
For a lot of people, it's simply not possible to remove race from every conversation, no matter how much they might wish to be able to; other people won't let them forget that it exists. For a lot of those people, having emoji that look like them is really fucking important.
posted by asterix at 5:06 PM on May 20, 2017 [26 favorites]
For a lot of people, it's simply not possible to remove race from every conversation, no matter how much they might wish to be able to; other people won't let them forget that it exists. For a lot of those people, having emoji that look like them is really fucking important.
posted by asterix at 5:06 PM on May 20, 2017 [26 favorites]
That gradient is unacceptable.
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 5:09 PM on May 20, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 5:09 PM on May 20, 2017 [3 favorites]
And merlynkline, if I had to guess it's not the result of a table flip, but an attempt to be considerate of the fact that representation matters and that choosing an emoji skintone can be fraught, for reasons like the ones Countess Elena mentions.
posted by asterix at 5:10 PM on May 20, 2017
posted by asterix at 5:10 PM on May 20, 2017
Relatedly, here's a blog post from one of the designers at Slack about why he chose to use a brown emoji in one of his designs. (Full disclosure: I used to work with him.)
posted by asterix at 5:14 PM on May 20, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by asterix at 5:14 PM on May 20, 2017 [2 favorites]
> choosing an emoji skintone can be fraught
Tell me about it. That's my primary reason for disliking them - I sit there looking at them and wondering which sets of people will be offended by each possible choice. So I would probably like the colour-cycling ones if I wasn't old enough to just :/
So just the other day people on here were talking about men who react badly to women accepting their compliments, and the reasons for that, and I'm thinking WTF?! And now people are talking about racist signalling with emoji FFS.
Christ I live a sheltered life. Thankfully. I think.
posted by merlynkline at 5:15 PM on May 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
Tell me about it. That's my primary reason for disliking them - I sit there looking at them and wondering which sets of people will be offended by each possible choice. So I would probably like the colour-cycling ones if I wasn't old enough to just :/
So just the other day people on here were talking about men who react badly to women accepting their compliments, and the reasons for that, and I'm thinking WTF?! And now people are talking about racist signalling with emoji FFS.
Christ I live a sheltered life. Thankfully. I think.
posted by merlynkline at 5:15 PM on May 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
Have a sandwich! And a pie! Also a pretzel, some anonymous canned food, some Chinese takeout, a stalk of broccoli...
posted by wanderingmind at 5:17 PM on May 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by wanderingmind at 5:17 PM on May 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
it's simply not possible to remove race from every conversation.
I get that, asterisk. I do. And I knew it might bring up some bad feelings to suggest that making emoji more like real people (of any specific color) has downsides, which is why I tried to explain. (Poorly, perhaps.) It's not the particular colors. It's the idea of adding color to every message, and even moreso, the idea of even trying to make them real-life accurate that is foolhardy, I think.
It's that, I worry that if you embrace the new color-specific emojis, it becomes impossible to have any conversations without. If now we're supposed to signal the color of our skin each and every time we say "I'm flying now, talk later", I am not sure how that helps?
I have the same reservations about what I guess are supposed to be male/female emoji. I long for the days of symbols that had no specific race, color, sex, gender or even species, and we all used the same ones.
The text smiley is safe, I hope. :)
At a UX level, this is about images vs icons, I suppose. From the moment crude basic symbols like a line-art folder symbol become detailed real-life representations (I am glaring at you, NeXTstep-era Steve), this was probably coming. Now we "need" photo-accurate mini-realities, rather than symbols, and the very rocky path descends. Will we end up with variable emoji for each possible hairstyle, height, weight, body type and and eye color eventually? At what point should we give up on that, and use tiny photos of ourselves making gestures, increasingly wildly?
For now, I keep using the cartoon yellow, because I really don't think my skin color has anything to do with me saying "Yup, I remembered the eggplant and yes, let's order pizza." and I hope if I am signaling anything about race, it's at about that level. But then again, I'm probably an outlier. I'm not sure what I'll use when they remove the yellow.
I may even have to go back to using words again, like some kind of old cranky person.
posted by rokusan at 5:29 PM on May 20, 2017 [4 favorites]
I get that, asterisk. I do. And I knew it might bring up some bad feelings to suggest that making emoji more like real people (of any specific color) has downsides, which is why I tried to explain. (Poorly, perhaps.) It's not the particular colors. It's the idea of adding color to every message, and even moreso, the idea of even trying to make them real-life accurate that is foolhardy, I think.
It's that, I worry that if you embrace the new color-specific emojis, it becomes impossible to have any conversations without. If now we're supposed to signal the color of our skin each and every time we say "I'm flying now, talk later", I am not sure how that helps?
I have the same reservations about what I guess are supposed to be male/female emoji. I long for the days of symbols that had no specific race, color, sex, gender or even species, and we all used the same ones.
The text smiley is safe, I hope. :)
At a UX level, this is about images vs icons, I suppose. From the moment crude basic symbols like a line-art folder symbol become detailed real-life representations (I am glaring at you, NeXTstep-era Steve), this was probably coming. Now we "need" photo-accurate mini-realities, rather than symbols, and the very rocky path descends. Will we end up with variable emoji for each possible hairstyle, height, weight, body type and and eye color eventually? At what point should we give up on that, and use tiny photos of ourselves making gestures, increasingly wildly?
For now, I keep using the cartoon yellow, because I really don't think my skin color has anything to do with me saying "Yup, I remembered the eggplant and yes, let's order pizza." and I hope if I am signaling anything about race, it's at about that level. But then again, I'm probably an outlier. I'm not sure what I'll use when they remove the yellow.
I may even have to go back to using words again, like some kind of old cranky person.
posted by rokusan at 5:29 PM on May 20, 2017 [4 favorites]
What? No. The gumdrops are awesome and the worst emojis are obviously from Samsung. They use a pair of saltines to mean “cookie”.
What the hell people? I thought that this was a safe space for cookies? Why you gotta be all chippist and ignore shortbreads? Really?
REALLY?
posted by Samizdata at 5:32 PM on May 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
What the hell people? I thought that this was a safe space for cookies? Why you gotta be all chippist and ignore shortbreads? Really?
REALLY?
posted by Samizdata at 5:32 PM on May 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
+1 for plain old text :)
I suppose we will soon get to the point where this is SOP: http://emojiface.com/
posted by merlynkline at 5:34 PM on May 20, 2017
I suppose we will soon get to the point where this is SOP: http://emojiface.com/
posted by merlynkline at 5:34 PM on May 20, 2017
I'm kind of out of touch with the latest in messaging, but I was under the impression that things were moving back towards having your own custom packs of smilies, obviating the os dependency.
posted by lucidium at 5:38 PM on May 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by lucidium at 5:38 PM on May 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
The Native Hut is a .... rice ball? No, no, no.
There are nastier confusions possible. For example, who really believed it was actually ever ice cream?
posted by rokusan at 5:40 PM on May 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
There are nastier confusions possible. For example, who really believed it was actually ever ice cream?
posted by rokusan at 5:40 PM on May 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
Doesn't matter anyway. Pretty sure Asus is never going to push a proper update for my ZenPad.
posted by Samizdata at 5:41 PM on May 20, 2017
posted by Samizdata at 5:41 PM on May 20, 2017
the worst emojis are obviously from Samsung.
This is hard to believe. How difficult was it for that intern to follow instructions and just take a screenshot of each Apple-designed emoji?
posted by rokusan at 5:46 PM on May 20, 2017 [10 favorites]
This is hard to believe. How difficult was it for that intern to follow instructions and just take a screenshot of each Apple-designed emoji?
posted by rokusan at 5:46 PM on May 20, 2017 [10 favorites]
It's the idea of adding color to every message, and even moreso, the idea of even trying to make them real-life accurate that is foolhardy, I think.
Except it's probably not something where anybody's actually demanding a full spectrum of colors. Just... some options. And judging from what I've seen people do in Slack, I know several POC developers who are happy to have options.
Yellow is not some kind of non-ethnic color, at least not in the US. The Simpsons are a huge cultural touchstone that happened well before this got to be a thing, and they made it clear that the yellow people are white, and that yellow is not the color of Carl or Apu. It does not take that many other color options to at least make POC feel like the attempt has been made at least insofar as the yellow matches any white person. Not everybody needs to use them or have them be anything like an exact match to just have the options mean something.
posted by Sequence at 6:08 PM on May 20, 2017 [12 favorites]
Except it's probably not something where anybody's actually demanding a full spectrum of colors. Just... some options. And judging from what I've seen people do in Slack, I know several POC developers who are happy to have options.
Yellow is not some kind of non-ethnic color, at least not in the US. The Simpsons are a huge cultural touchstone that happened well before this got to be a thing, and they made it clear that the yellow people are white, and that yellow is not the color of Carl or Apu. It does not take that many other color options to at least make POC feel like the attempt has been made at least insofar as the yellow matches any white person. Not everybody needs to use them or have them be anything like an exact match to just have the options mean something.
posted by Sequence at 6:08 PM on May 20, 2017 [12 favorites]
But they have also added many shades of kinda-white-person, Sequence. By adding choice at all, there's now a choice required. Is a white person supposed to change the emoji from default yellow to pale white before sending, and does it signal when they do?
I agree with you that yellow is not ideally basic or neutral*, not really, and it only sort-of-works that way at the moment because it was the first/default/raceless choice. That won't last long, as children who don't remember the only-yellow days take over and grow up making explicit race/color choices on every message. Again, I'm not clear on how that's a good thing, but it's inevitable, here.
I was only half kidding by suggesting gray.
posted by rokusan at 6:22 PM on May 20, 2017 [2 favorites]
I agree with you that yellow is not ideally basic or neutral*, not really, and it only sort-of-works that way at the moment because it was the first/default/raceless choice. That won't last long, as children who don't remember the only-yellow days take over and grow up making explicit race/color choices on every message. Again, I'm not clear on how that's a good thing, but it's inevitable, here.
I was only half kidding by suggesting gray.
posted by rokusan at 6:22 PM on May 20, 2017 [2 favorites]
Yesterday, someone sent me a light research paper on the use of LOL, vs haha, vs, heh, as striated by age and demographic. And I thought two things; wtf marketing people, and I am way too old for this shit.
Also, count me on team gum drop and emoticon.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 6:31 PM on May 20, 2017
Also, count me on team gum drop and emoticon.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 6:31 PM on May 20, 2017
Worth noting that different skin colour emoji is part of the Unicode specification, so anyone implementing emojis has to do it or else you'll get a regular emoji and a skin colour square.
Unicode stumbled into a bad place when they added emojis to the standard - previously, they were Japan-specific, every phone carrier had a different set, and Apple exclusively used Unicode so they weren't going to add a specific pictogram set for every carrier. Unicode agreed in principle but now they're the arbiter of what symbols are on everyone's phones, which means they become an arbiter of every single culture war out there. Unicode were already more political than they were comfortable with - there's quite a few written languages with incomplete Unicode support, which means they cannot be written on a computer - but this is a whole new level.
Take the Australian Aboriginal flag, for instance. Every so often an Indigenous Australian will start a push for the Australian Aboriginal flag to become an emoji just like all the other flags - but Unicode, in a moment of brilliance, decided that the Unicode for any flag would be a combination of 'flag' and the UN two letter country code. This is automatic, so if the UN revises its country codes, any new countries automatically have a Unicode representation for their flag. It also means that anything that is not a country doesn't get a flag, so Unicode doesn't have to be the arbiter of which causes are and are not worthy.
And then they added the Rainbow Flag last year.
posted by Merus at 6:41 PM on May 20, 2017 [5 favorites]
Unicode stumbled into a bad place when they added emojis to the standard - previously, they were Japan-specific, every phone carrier had a different set, and Apple exclusively used Unicode so they weren't going to add a specific pictogram set for every carrier. Unicode agreed in principle but now they're the arbiter of what symbols are on everyone's phones, which means they become an arbiter of every single culture war out there. Unicode were already more political than they were comfortable with - there's quite a few written languages with incomplete Unicode support, which means they cannot be written on a computer - but this is a whole new level.
Take the Australian Aboriginal flag, for instance. Every so often an Indigenous Australian will start a push for the Australian Aboriginal flag to become an emoji just like all the other flags - but Unicode, in a moment of brilliance, decided that the Unicode for any flag would be a combination of 'flag' and the UN two letter country code. This is automatic, so if the UN revises its country codes, any new countries automatically have a Unicode representation for their flag. It also means that anything that is not a country doesn't get a flag, so Unicode doesn't have to be the arbiter of which causes are and are not worthy.
And then they added the Rainbow Flag last year.
posted by Merus at 6:41 PM on May 20, 2017 [5 favorites]
I for one am glad that the gumdrop emojis are going, for lo they are an abomination. I am horrified every time I use one by mistake.
posted by Andrhia at 6:47 PM on May 20, 2017
posted by Andrhia at 6:47 PM on May 20, 2017
Seeing a lot of people upset that they have to think about race more often because of this. Makes me wonder what race/skin-tone they are that they don't often have to think about race in their culture. 🤔
posted by runcibleshaw at 6:49 PM on May 20, 2017 [20 favorites]
posted by runcibleshaw at 6:49 PM on May 20, 2017 [20 favorites]
What's with all the hostility to the gradients? Y'all are casting some serious... shade.
posted by notoriety public at 6:57 PM on May 20, 2017 [8 favorites]
posted by notoriety public at 6:57 PM on May 20, 2017 [8 favorites]
I think the gumdrops look stupid. I welcome this change, despite living in the Apple ecosystem.
If you don't use an Android device, why do you care what the emoji look like on Android, given that they are almost all similar enough to Apple's versions that they aren't going to cause major misunderstanding.
It seems that the gumdrops are only universally reviled by people who don't actually use them or see them, which is weird.
I like them enough that I went to the trouble of wading through Signal's settings menu to disable the on by default option that makes emoji in that particular app use more Apple-like emoji. I was one of the people that yelled at them for making the change without having an option for using system emoji, which they thankfully added within a few days.
Now I'm going to have to go out of my way to set the old emoji font as a higher priority than the new one in O so that I can keep my gumdrops yet still get sandwich and whatever else is new.
posted by wierdo at 7:06 PM on May 20, 2017 [2 favorites]
If you don't use an Android device, why do you care what the emoji look like on Android, given that they are almost all similar enough to Apple's versions that they aren't going to cause major misunderstanding.
It seems that the gumdrops are only universally reviled by people who don't actually use them or see them, which is weird.
I like them enough that I went to the trouble of wading through Signal's settings menu to disable the on by default option that makes emoji in that particular app use more Apple-like emoji. I was one of the people that yelled at them for making the change without having an option for using system emoji, which they thankfully added within a few days.
Now I'm going to have to go out of my way to set the old emoji font as a higher priority than the new one in O so that I can keep my gumdrops yet still get sandwich and whatever else is new.
posted by wierdo at 7:06 PM on May 20, 2017 [2 favorites]
I'm an Apple user but I see the gumdrops on Chrome on the desktop at work, and I hate them. The frowny ones look like Ted fucking Cruz.
posted by uncleozzy at 7:30 PM on May 20, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by uncleozzy at 7:30 PM on May 20, 2017 [3 favorites]
I heard that if you just display it as a colon, hyphen, and right parenthesis, it's not racist.
posted by Bringer Tom at 7:51 PM on May 20, 2017
posted by Bringer Tom at 7:51 PM on May 20, 2017
:)
whew. still works. wait.
*types description after asterisk as description of action
*sighs with relief
posted by eustatic at 8:01 PM on May 20, 2017 [2 favorites]
whew. still works. wait.
*types description after asterisk as description of action
*sighs with relief
posted by eustatic at 8:01 PM on May 20, 2017 [2 favorites]
the worst emojis are obviously from Samsung.
Can confirm. Google's blobs are a little weird, but Samsung's bullshit is just diabolical.
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:04 PM on May 20, 2017
wierdo, what uncleozzy said. I see them in Chrome, in Google Hangouts, in various places and they all look wrong, ugly, and badly designed.
posted by SansPoint at 8:10 PM on May 20, 2017
posted by SansPoint at 8:10 PM on May 20, 2017
I want to clarify my earlier comment about a "bullshit culture war." I was talking about people "warring" about emoji sets, such as iOS vs Android, especially in light of the language in the article about yellow elephant dung and "the worst emoji on the planet." I was not talking about racism or genderism within the emoji sets themselves. My apologies.
posted by glonous keming at 8:22 PM on May 20, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by glonous keming at 8:22 PM on May 20, 2017 [2 favorites]
I appreciate that somebody finally made an effort to recognize the Dark Elf community.
posted by Strange Interlude at 8:43 PM on May 20, 2017
posted by Strange Interlude at 8:43 PM on May 20, 2017
When they introduced the skin tone variations, my first thought was, I can't see the white emojis ending up in a good place. I'm not white, but I still use the original yellow ones because I don't want to have to declare my race with every single message I send. But maybe the yellow doesn't feel like such a huge disconnect to me because I'm light-skinned. Clearly, a lot of people were unhappy with the originals. But I think emoji should have went in the direction of making the defaults truly neutral for everybody instead of adding the skin tones.
posted by airmail at 9:06 PM on May 20, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by airmail at 9:06 PM on May 20, 2017 [2 favorites]
The problem is, people are suggesting grey as a suitable 'neutral colour', but haven't fully considered the implications for people who are differently-alive.
posted by Jimbob at 9:21 PM on May 20, 2017 [5 favorites]
posted by Jimbob at 9:21 PM on May 20, 2017 [5 favorites]
Seeing a lot of people upset that they have to think about race more often because of this. Makes me wonder what race/skin-tone they are that they don't often have to think about race in their culture. 🤔
👍👍🏻👍🏼👍🏽👍🏾👍🏿
posted by emeiji at 9:37 PM on May 20, 2017 [10 favorites]
👍👍🏻👍🏼👍🏽👍🏾👍🏿
posted by emeiji at 9:37 PM on May 20, 2017 [10 favorites]
I heard that if you just display it as a colon, hyphen, and right parenthesis, it's not racist.
Oh, so it's a right parenthesis, you fascist?
(-:
posted by rokusan at 9:46 PM on May 20, 2017 [4 favorites]
Oh, so it's a right parenthesis, you fascist?
(-:
posted by rokusan at 9:46 PM on May 20, 2017 [4 favorites]
I understand the desire to standardize across platforms, but I adore the expressiveness of the gumdrops and will be quite dismayed when they're gone. Hangouts at least has the gumdrop-face animated sticker set, which presumably will be staying.
posted by NMcCoy at 10:13 PM on May 20, 2017
posted by NMcCoy at 10:13 PM on May 20, 2017
It seems that the gumdrops are only universally reviled by people who don't actually use them or see them, which is weird.
I see them daily since Hangouts in Chrome on Windows uses the gumdrops. Can't stand them compared to their iOS counterparts.
If you don't use an Android device, why do you care what the emoji look like on Android
Because going from the detailed emoji on iOS to the clunky gumdrops on Android changes the meaning or tone of what I sent. The two do not have styles which match. It's a huge clash. A face with a slight smile on one device becomes a huge leer on another. It's as if all your texts are composed in Helvetica but your recipient only sees Comic Sans or Courier. The tone changes. In some cases, the meaning changes.
The better solution would be for all the parties to open up their emoji and let the recipient see what the sender intended. That way my wife's Android can display the Apple emoji I've sent, and I can see what she picked out of her selection of yellow gumdrops. And everyone can then use what they like best.
posted by honestcoyote at 10:26 PM on May 20, 2017 [4 favorites]
I see them daily since Hangouts in Chrome on Windows uses the gumdrops. Can't stand them compared to their iOS counterparts.
If you don't use an Android device, why do you care what the emoji look like on Android
Because going from the detailed emoji on iOS to the clunky gumdrops on Android changes the meaning or tone of what I sent. The two do not have styles which match. It's a huge clash. A face with a slight smile on one device becomes a huge leer on another. It's as if all your texts are composed in Helvetica but your recipient only sees Comic Sans or Courier. The tone changes. In some cases, the meaning changes.
The better solution would be for all the parties to open up their emoji and let the recipient see what the sender intended. That way my wife's Android can display the Apple emoji I've sent, and I can see what she picked out of her selection of yellow gumdrops. And everyone can then use what they like best.
posted by honestcoyote at 10:26 PM on May 20, 2017 [4 favorites]
It's the idea of adding color to every message, and even moreso, the idea of even trying to make them real-life accurate that is foolhardy, I think.
Its from the 1990s - absolute pre-history in emoji terms, but Scot Mcleod's "Understanding Comics" is my go to book when it comes to explaining the degree to which icons are made universal - or not - by their design. Here is the relevant chapter as pdf.
The basic problem is that the more realistic we make any emoji, the more or them we will have to produce - and the more time people will have to spend cycling through a library to find the one they want - and the more they will complain either because of the time this wastes or because we have left out the specific variant that they are after - so we add that one - and the problem gets worse.
To some extent - this is what happens with any new language as it develops. We eventually end up with a modest set of words that everybody uses - and huge dictionaries full of ones that most people don't. What sets emojis apart, in this respects, is that their audience is global - with all the cultural issues that implies. Also the selection mechanism is pretty clumsy for libraries that go over a few dozen.
posted by rongorongo at 11:26 PM on May 20, 2017 [8 favorites]
Its from the 1990s - absolute pre-history in emoji terms, but Scot Mcleod's "Understanding Comics" is my go to book when it comes to explaining the degree to which icons are made universal - or not - by their design. Here is the relevant chapter as pdf.
The basic problem is that the more realistic we make any emoji, the more or them we will have to produce - and the more time people will have to spend cycling through a library to find the one they want - and the more they will complain either because of the time this wastes or because we have left out the specific variant that they are after - so we add that one - and the problem gets worse.
To some extent - this is what happens with any new language as it develops. We eventually end up with a modest set of words that everybody uses - and huge dictionaries full of ones that most people don't. What sets emojis apart, in this respects, is that their audience is global - with all the cultural issues that implies. Also the selection mechanism is pretty clumsy for libraries that go over a few dozen.
posted by rongorongo at 11:26 PM on May 20, 2017 [8 favorites]
That's why Gboard added a text search, so if you know you want a rice ball, just type rice ball and pick it. Or if it's a single word, like 🍰 they will often pop up as suggestions in the suggestion bar. 🍙
Or just add emoticons to your dictionary and you can¯\_(ツ)_/¯ like a boss. No need to (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻ over mismatched emoji. If you're on Android and not using Gboard you're missing out.
posted by wierdo at 12:03 AM on May 21, 2017 [2 favorites]
Or just add emoticons to your dictionary and you can¯\_(ツ)_/¯ like a boss. No need to (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻ over mismatched emoji. If you're on Android and not using Gboard you're missing out.
posted by wierdo at 12:03 AM on May 21, 2017 [2 favorites]
Dang, I loved the gumdrops. I find Apple's emoji really boring and vanilla by comparison.
I can see how the deviation from some sort of implicit "standard" appearance could be frustrating to people, but I just really liked the expressiveness of those gumdrops. But I switched to iPhone after it became impossible to get a decent sub-5" Android phone so I guess it doesn't matter anymore, I'm stuck with Apple's milquetoast garbage regardless.
posted by valrus at 12:44 AM on May 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
I can see how the deviation from some sort of implicit "standard" appearance could be frustrating to people, but I just really liked the expressiveness of those gumdrops. But I switched to iPhone after it became impossible to get a decent sub-5" Android phone so I guess it doesn't matter anymore, I'm stuck with Apple's milquetoast garbage regardless.
posted by valrus at 12:44 AM on May 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
"Gus Fonts"?
Been and Fonts have an emoji blog on Medium, so they're probably real people. Or at least real Twitter accounts.
posted by effbot at 2:23 AM on May 21, 2017
Been and Fonts have an emoji blog on Medium, so they're probably real people. Or at least real Twitter accounts.
posted by effbot at 2:23 AM on May 21, 2017
Because going from the detailed emoji on iOS to the clunky gumdrops on Android changes the meaning or tone of what I sent. The two do not have styles which match.
Though it's Apple's that's the outlier with the infamous grin/grimace (I like their version better, personally).
posted by atoxyl at 2:41 AM on May 21, 2017
Though it's Apple's that's the outlier with the infamous grin/grimace (I like their version better, personally).
posted by atoxyl at 2:41 AM on May 21, 2017
I just remember being quite annoyed when the app automatically converted ;-) to some icon.
posted by sammyo at 4:54 AM on May 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by sammyo at 4:54 AM on May 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
Though it's Apple's that's the outlier with the infamous grin/grimace
I'm a big fan of having milder versions of stuff. I don't think I've ever been made happier by an emoji than when they introduced the Slightly Smiling face. I'd never felt comfortable using that cheesy, overblown Hollywood grin for situations where I'd previously used :-) and I'd more than once bemoaned the lack of a proper British smile enoji.
So that probably plays into why I'm so fond of the Apple grimace, which reflects exasperation rather than rage. There's a place for an emoji that says "GRAAAARGH!" but I really like having one that says "Yeesh!"
posted by the latin mouse at 6:53 AM on May 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
I'm a big fan of having milder versions of stuff. I don't think I've ever been made happier by an emoji than when they introduced the Slightly Smiling face. I'd never felt comfortable using that cheesy, overblown Hollywood grin for situations where I'd previously used :-) and I'd more than once bemoaned the lack of a proper British smile enoji.
So that probably plays into why I'm so fond of the Apple grimace, which reflects exasperation rather than rage. There's a place for an emoji that says "GRAAAARGH!" but I really like having one that says "Yeesh!"
posted by the latin mouse at 6:53 AM on May 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
Anyone a fan of the smurfs? We have bright blue as a possible skin tone at work on Slack (probably slack-instance dependent) and I hope that I am not participating in any racist regimes by utilizing that as my go-to skin tone.
I really like that desktop and Android (but not iOS) Slack client lets me turn off emoji, so I can read what people typed. Seeing :rice_ball: is nowhere near as cute as 🍙, but it is much harder to misinterpret for less commonly used emoji.
(Annoyingly, slack, by default, also replaces :) with :slightlysmilingface: so there's that.)
(Also: plug for my favorite emoji website, Octopus holdings: Octopus holding a rice ball and Octopus holding a goat.)
posted by fragmede at 8:20 AM on May 21, 2017
I really like that desktop and Android (but not iOS) Slack client lets me turn off emoji, so I can read what people typed. Seeing :rice_ball: is nowhere near as cute as 🍙, but it is much harder to misinterpret for less commonly used emoji.
(Annoyingly, slack, by default, also replaces :) with :slightlysmilingface: so there's that.)
(Also: plug for my favorite emoji website, Octopus holdings: Octopus holding a rice ball and Octopus holding a goat.)
posted by fragmede at 8:20 AM on May 21, 2017
Everyone who has ever hated on the Google Blobs is a soulless monster.
Also, the Google Blobs were the emoji set that stayed closest to the original meanings as defined by the spec.
The market ruins everything.
posted by tobascodagama at 8:25 AM on May 21, 2017 [6 favorites]
Also, the Google Blobs were the emoji set that stayed closest to the original meanings as defined by the spec.
The market ruins everything.
posted by tobascodagama at 8:25 AM on May 21, 2017 [6 favorites]
I mean, I figured they were all encoded the same way, I just didn't realize the artwork was proprietary.
To clarify, Unicode doesn't specify the artwork for Emoji, any more than they tell font makers how to draw a lowercase letter a. The standard only specifies a short description of what each glyph is supposed to represent.
posted by radwolf76 at 8:50 AM on May 21, 2017 [3 favorites]
To clarify, Unicode doesn't specify the artwork for Emoji, any more than they tell font makers how to draw a lowercase letter a. The standard only specifies a short description of what each glyph is supposed to represent.
posted by radwolf76 at 8:50 AM on May 21, 2017 [3 favorites]
To reiterate some points made above, and add some info:
- Gus Fonts is absolutely his real name.
- An original driver for gradients was to provide a way to delimit foreground/background with a subtler border. The new emoji are more distinct against various color backgrounds.
- Different emoji on different platforms have a different 'feel' and this did cause messaging problems. The redesign tried to address that, this was a key goal. Unfortunately of course it restricts avenues for design innovation. The fact that emoji are part of 'brand identity' (and of global brands at that) also restricts what you end up seeing on your mass platforms.
- The emoji repertoire is controlled by Unicode. I believe that was a mistake, but this water is long under the bridge. In its favor, you do get the ability to search and index these messages, which someday might be a boon for sociologists researching the early decades of the 21st century. But you get a slow pace of innovation and rather strong pressures towards homogenization.
- The next version of Unicode has the ability to support sub-regional flags (hello England, Scotland, and Wales) but of course this is still based on standards, so various independence groups fighting for recognition won't get much help from this. And Android already prefers to omit flags from some territories where they seem especially contested, actually.
- The vendors who produce and distribute emoji fonts recognize the importance of interoperability and Unicode provides that. So while the technology allows for fonts that encode any text as emoji, and people do ask to do this, there's a pretty strong countervailing sentiment against it. Also, platforms like Chrome are actually pretty restrictive on the emoji sequences they render, so sometimes there's more to be done than just adding more emoji to a font.
posted by dougfelt at 10:30 AM on May 21, 2017 [4 favorites]
- Gus Fonts is absolutely his real name.
- An original driver for gradients was to provide a way to delimit foreground/background with a subtler border. The new emoji are more distinct against various color backgrounds.
- Different emoji on different platforms have a different 'feel' and this did cause messaging problems. The redesign tried to address that, this was a key goal. Unfortunately of course it restricts avenues for design innovation. The fact that emoji are part of 'brand identity' (and of global brands at that) also restricts what you end up seeing on your mass platforms.
- The emoji repertoire is controlled by Unicode. I believe that was a mistake, but this water is long under the bridge. In its favor, you do get the ability to search and index these messages, which someday might be a boon for sociologists researching the early decades of the 21st century. But you get a slow pace of innovation and rather strong pressures towards homogenization.
- The next version of Unicode has the ability to support sub-regional flags (hello England, Scotland, and Wales) but of course this is still based on standards, so various independence groups fighting for recognition won't get much help from this. And Android already prefers to omit flags from some territories where they seem especially contested, actually.
- The vendors who produce and distribute emoji fonts recognize the importance of interoperability and Unicode provides that. So while the technology allows for fonts that encode any text as emoji, and people do ask to do this, there's a pretty strong countervailing sentiment against it. Also, platforms like Chrome are actually pretty restrictive on the emoji sequences they render, so sometimes there's more to be done than just adding more emoji to a font.
posted by dougfelt at 10:30 AM on May 21, 2017 [4 favorites]
Back in the early 1990s, I had a colleague who had the job of attending the international standards group which determined which letters would go on which number of a telephone keypad. The group's meetings were tedious and argumentative - but always in great locations. He said they were all rather sad when they eventually had to agree on a solution and then disband themselves. It seems Skype has replaced face to face meetings in real life- but I harbour fond dreams of being a globe-trotting attendee of the Unicode's emoji sub-committee and spending lazy hours looking at the difference between a 🍘 and a 🍙 - and thinking of ways of making the seaweed look less like a little door.
posted by rongorongo at 8:30 AM on May 22, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by rongorongo at 8:30 AM on May 22, 2017 [2 favorites]
I find Apple's emojis so aesthetically tacky that I would rather not use emojis at all than have to see or use them. I really love Google's emojis - they're simple and cute, and far more human and expressive.
posted by adso at 9:51 PM on May 23, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by adso at 9:51 PM on May 23, 2017 [2 favorites]
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posted by the antecedent of that pronoun at 1:59 PM on May 20, 2017 [7 favorites]