I totally feel you because I loved the blobs, but my understanding is that the goal here isn't so much to create gender fluid emoji, the goal is to create emoji that people feel personally...
I totally feel you because I loved the blobs, but my understanding is that the goal here isn't so much to create gender fluid emoji, the goal is to create emoji that people feel personally represents them. The main reason I say this is because I've seen Jennifer Daniel (the person interviewed in this piece) speak about it and why she's been trying to add more and more customization to emoji.
To me, the whole idea behind amorphous, asexual emojis is that they can and do represent everyone by representing no one in particular. Edit: To be clear, I'm not upset by more representation in...
To me, the whole idea behind amorphous, asexual emojis is that they can and do represent everyone by representing no one in particular.
Edit: To be clear, I'm not upset by more representation in emoji. I just feel like it was already a solved problem.
This is...this is what all emoji used to be. Gendering emoji was a mistake, so was adding any skin colors, now instead of an abstract sense of representation as they're all encompassing, you have...
This is...this is what all emoji used to be. Gendering emoji was a mistake, so was adding any skin colors, now instead of an abstract sense of representation as they're all encompassing, you have specific genders and skin colors in play, and representation in emoji has to be more exact.
I specifically ignore the skin colours, yet every time I use the thumbs up emoji in what's app it insists on telling me I can select my real colour. I know goddammit, I like the original yellow...
I specifically ignore the skin colours, yet every time I use the thumbs up emoji in what's app it insists on telling me I can select my real colour. I know goddammit, I like the original yellow one, leave me alone!
I do like that all the comments are old people yelling at clouds about how the blob emojis were better. Clearly if people thought they were better there would be no demand for the more specific...
Exemplary
I do like that all the comments are old people yelling at clouds about how the blob emojis were better. Clearly if people thought they were better there would be no demand for the more specific emojis, which there is. In the current state of affairs having these more gender-ambiguous emoji is better than the sad binary of :long-haired person: for a woman and :short-haired person: for a man.
Pining for something ~5 years old makes one out of touch, now. How fast things progress... Ultimately, we're just a few nerds squabbling over tech minutiae. Agreed, although that seems to be more...
Pining for something ~5 years old makes one out of touch, now. How fast things progress...
Ultimately, we're just a few nerds squabbling over tech minutiae.
In the current state of affairs having these more gender-ambiguous emoji is better than the sad binary of :long-haired person: for a woman and :short-haired person: for a man.
Agreed, although that seems to be more of a reflection on society than the emojis, themselves. I'm scrolling through them (Android 9.0) right now, and for the most part there's nothing to say whether or not they're gendered besides the gender-normative stuff that lives in my head.
I assume it'll be similar to the existing skin-color modifiers, which uses something like the combining characters system. Skin-color emoji is expressed as <base emoji> immediately followed by a...
I assume it'll be similar to the existing skin-color modifiers, which uses something like the combining characters system. Skin-color emoji is expressed as <base emoji> immediately followed by a skin-color modifier, the flexible "couple kissing" is "<person> + <ZWJ> + <heart> + <ZWJ> + <person>", and so on.
There's already some existing support for selecting male/female versions of some emoji via "<base> + <ZWJ> + <male/female>", so I expect Google will just use their new neutral figures as the default.
All these combining sequences and modifiers are kind of neat, but I still think it's an inherently flawed approach for inline graphics at this scale, when we could just have an embedded vector graphics format.
I just wish text was text. Emojis already overcomplicate things. But I do agree that if I had the choice to go down two timelines, one with emojis and one with embedded vector graphics, I would go...
I just wish text was text. Emojis already overcomplicate things. But I do agree that if I had the choice to go down two timelines, one with emojis and one with embedded vector graphics, I would go the vector route.
The blobs were gender-fluid and ethnically ambiguous and cute as hell. Bring back the damn blobs!
I totally feel you because I loved the blobs, but my understanding is that the goal here isn't so much to create gender fluid emoji, the goal is to create emoji that people feel personally represents them. The main reason I say this is because I've seen Jennifer Daniel (the person interviewed in this piece) speak about it and why she's been trying to add more and more customization to emoji.
To me, the whole idea behind amorphous, asexual emojis is that they can and do represent everyone by representing no one in particular.
Edit: To be clear, I'm not upset by more representation in emoji. I just feel like it was already a solved problem.
The problem I see with that goal as laudable as it is, is that it isn't achievable. You cover everyone with abstraction, not specialization.
The blobs were the best emoji I've ever seen! They got me! :-D
This is...this is what all emoji used to be. Gendering emoji was a mistake, so was adding any skin colors, now instead of an abstract sense of representation as they're all encompassing, you have specific genders and skin colors in play, and representation in emoji has to be more exact.
I specifically ignore the skin colours, yet every time I use the thumbs up emoji in what's app it insists on telling me I can select my real colour. I know goddammit, I like the original yellow one, leave me alone!
The thing that I find crazy about this is that this was a totally solved problem. BLOBS. BLOB emoji re-enforce no stereotypes. Bring back the blobs!
I do like that all the comments are old people yelling at clouds about how the blob emojis were better. Clearly if people thought they were better there would be no demand for the more specific emojis, which there is. In the current state of affairs having these more gender-ambiguous emoji is better than the sad binary of :long-haired person: for a woman and :short-haired person: for a man.
Pining for something ~5 years old makes one out of touch, now. How fast things progress...
Ultimately, we're just a few nerds squabbling over tech minutiae.
Agreed, although that seems to be more of a reflection on society than the emojis, themselves. I'm scrolling through them (Android 9.0) right now, and for the most part there's nothing to say whether or not they're gendered besides the gender-normative stuff that lives in my head.
So... they added 8 different hairstyles?
I guess I'm just curious how they're going to describe these all in unicode.
I assume it'll be similar to the existing skin-color modifiers, which uses something like the combining characters system. Skin-color emoji is expressed as <base emoji> immediately followed by a skin-color modifier, the flexible "couple kissing" is "<person> + <ZWJ> + <heart> + <ZWJ> + <person>", and so on.
There's already some existing support for selecting male/female versions of some emoji via "<base> + <ZWJ> + <male/female>", so I expect Google will just use their new neutral figures as the default.
All these combining sequences and modifiers are kind of neat, but I still think it's an inherently flawed approach for inline graphics at this scale, when we could just have an embedded vector graphics format.
I just wish text was text. Emojis already overcomplicate things. But I do agree that if I had the choice to go down two timelines, one with emojis and one with embedded vector graphics, I would go the vector route.