
Unicode is over and it dies over Emoji - stesch
http://blog.koehntopp.info/index.php/2745-unicode-is-over-and-it-dies-over-emoji/
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microcolonel
The original Unicode emoji made sense as a compatibility measure with Japanese
encodings, but I thoroughly disagree with the expansion of Unicode Emoji.

The idea that the default emoji represent white people is ridiculous, since
the codepoints are meant to translate directly with Japanese computer systems.
In the original NTT DoCoMo set, they didn't even have facial skin (probably
because of device resolution and colour limitations), just features like eyes
and mouths. Maybe the Unicode consortium made a mistake by specifying them as
bright yellow, which people now associate strongly with the Simpsons, where
white people are represented as bright saturated yellow.

In my understanding, nobody in the standardization process even considered
that Emoji had a race. If people project one race or another onto what are
supposed to be disembodied universal facial expressions, then that's their
problem.

~~~
encryptThrow32
I feel you should have more empathy for people that do not look like you.

For some people, race, fighting for for recognition, let alone equality, is a
daily battle. You may live and work far from this conflict, but it exists, and
in some part the diversity modifiers for emoji provide folks with empowerment.
Don't take that away over limitations in the spec.

There are billions now who own smart phones, and want that funny Japanese
Telco encoding standard to reflect their world too.

This is not a technical or standards problem, and the fitzpatrick modifiers do
not decrease functionality of unicode.

I feel my point is to chill, and consider how functionality outside your
perceived value might bring others joy.

~~~
microcolonel
> _I feel you should have more empathy for people that do not look like you._

Quite literally nobody has bright yellow skin. Emoji are not human beings,
they are エモ → e-mo → emotion 字 → ji → characters (update: apparently I've been
misled, but not in a way which changes my point, see reply below). The
codepoints do not contain, have never contained, and will never contain a
racial identity. They are an abstract representation of universal human
emotions, just as generic as single-line ASCII emoticons.

Nobody's racial identity was represented by Unicode emoji faces to begin with,
and certainly nobody any less than me.

~~~
Grue3
Actually, "emoji" is 絵[e] (picture) + 文字[moji] (character). A lot of them do
not represent emotions, but just random pictograms. In my opinion while
encoding pictures as text was a good idea at the time (due to limitations of
mobile text messages), it makes no sense in 2017 where we have technology to
easily inline any picture in the text even on mobile phones.

~~~
microcolonel
> _Actually, "emoji" is 絵[e] (picture) + 文字[moji] (character). A lot of them
> do not represent emotions, but just random pictograms._

Thanks, I really do wonder why people lie to me or make things up. I guess
that's what I get for never typing it into my IME in full.

> _In my opinion while encoding pictures as text was a good idea at the time
> (due to limitations of mobile text messages), it makes no sense in 2017
> where we have technology to easily inline any picture in the text even on
> mobile phones._

Even at the time, the character set was apparently meant to replace common
phrases and text emoticons (for SMS, as you note). There's frankly no way
anyone would have the time and energy to produce high quality custom images
for simple messages, save for selfies.

~~~
grzm
It's not hard to imagine people making that assumption, as it is reasonable if
not correct, particularly as "emoticons" and "emoji" are often used to
describe the same or similar non-character glyphs. There's no need to assume
bad faith on others, any more than it would be to assume ill on your part for
repeating it without confirming it.

~~~
microcolonel
Well, I suppose the fault is shared, but it was told to me confidently enough
by somebody I would generally trust in these matters. I'm not throwing any
particular person under the bus here, so I think I can be as emphatic as I'd
like.

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derefr
My understanding of the Emoji acceptance process is that such characters only
get accepted if you can prove that people _have_ been using the emoji as a
text-like glyph in other contexts (usually either on paper, or in a
proprietary forum/chat system.)

Unicode’s aim isn’t to serve as a useful “palette” of characters that people
should actually want to type ever. It’s to serve as a single, unified encoding
for archiving existing texts. If people persistently write the same odd symbol
on paper, then Unicode aims to ensure that they’ll have a common codepoint to
encode that symbol to.

The worst case scenario for Unicode is a world where people encode texts onto
forums with millions of little proprietary Emoji images, and then those sites
close, the images are lost, the URLs of the images are just UUID.png or
somesuch, and so the contextual meaning of the text is lost.

The second-worst-case is one where such texts blanket the internet,
and—because of their various derivative-proprietary encodings—it becomes
impossible to make such texts machine-readable/indexable/sentiment-
analyzable/etc.

The Unicode Standards Body might be behaving rather silly from the perspective
of someone who just wants to be able to record their own thoughts—but from the
perspective of ensure the Internet and all its documents remain amenable to
library science, the standards body is behaving perfectly sensibly. They’ll
give people whatever they need to keep using Unicode in place of some
proprietary extension, because that’s how you keep text on computers
interchangeable.

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mmastrac
The original Emoji sort of made sense - there were a number of disparate
systems already using the private use area. Now that we're inventing brand new
ones that are going to literally live _forever_ the unicode community should
seriously consider hoisting them out and forcing carriers and other
communication utilities to create proper standards for inline images.

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SCdF
Is it intentionally ironic or unintentionally confusing that the first
instances that should be ":-)" have actually been converted into the emoji
versions?

~~~
ac29
Either the author fixed it or your browser is doing it -- they show up as the
text versions for me.

~~~
isotopp
The author fixed it.

That is, TIL that wordpress replaces these things on output, and there is not
even a switch to prevent that. I had to install a plugin to fix this.

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FreakyT
I definitely agree that the over-specialization of emoji faces is ridiculous.

However, one question has occurred to me: what has the _actual_ consequence of
the skin-tone-modifier been on real-world emoji use?

The answer, in my experience, is that essentially _no one uses skin-tone-
modified emoji at all_. This, in turn, makes me wonder if perhaps _this_ was
the intended result the whole time—to, in a very circuitous way, ensure that
the "default" state of any given emoji has a generic skin tone.

~~~
always_good
> what has the actual consequence of the skin-tone-modifier been on real-world
> emoji use?

The blog post gave some good examples.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/white-p...](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/white-
people-dont-use-white-emoji/481695/)

[http://www.businessinsider.com/kendall-jenner-used-darker-
em...](http://www.businessinsider.com/kendall-jenner-used-darker-emoji-than-
her-skin-tone-2017-8?IR=T)

I don't think white people use white emoji because being white isn't part of
their self-identity. That's one of the normalizing qualities of being the
dominant type (e.g. Hollywood). Just like nobody points out that they are
heterosexual.

I live in Mexico and my darker skinner friends use the color tinted emojis.

~~~
derefr
Now I’m curious whether white minorities in cultures (e.g. in Hong Kong) are
more likely to use the modifier.

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pjmlp
I also don't get the emoji pollution on Unicode, maybe it is an age thing.

~~~
maxerickson
The thing to do is to ponder the tremendous consequences if you don't pay any
attention to them.

~~~
pjmlp
Not being able to write meaningless sentences on whatsapp and similar?

~~~
maxerickson
See, it'll be alright.

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Frondo
I welcome adding Emoji to Unicode. I also welcome adding different skin tones
to Unicode. I welcome _everything_ that invites more people to engage with,
appreciate, and feel included by technology.

I welcome a world where you don't need to be at all tech-savvy to get as much
out of a computer as anyone else. People can drive without being engine-savvy,
and I think it is fan-fucking-fastic that computing is moving in the same way.

Technology is such an amplifier for human activity, if everyone doesn't get to
play, we're doing it wrong.

Any time anyone writes "this new thing that makes a system less elegant but
opens it up to more people is a bad new thing" \-- _they are doing it wrong_.

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junkscience2017
easy early fix would have been to make all skin tone emojis blue. okay now
they represent everyone and no one, no need to introduce ten skin color
gradients for each meme

~~~
maxerickson
There are (a small number of) people with blue tinted skin.

[http://abcnews.go.com/Health/blue-skinned-people-kentucky-
re...](http://abcnews.go.com/Health/blue-skinned-people-kentucky-reveal-
todays-genetic-lesson/story?id=15759819)

~~~
Klathmon
FYI that article will start playing a full-volume video ad as you start
scrolling down. Scared the shit out of me.

~~~
maxerickson
Sorry, didn't happen to me, I would have found an alternative.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Fugates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Fugates)

~~~
Klathmon
No knock against you, just wanted to point it out since it was so shocking for
me.

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stesch
Why is this flagged??

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gkya
Emoji fanboys I guess... I seem to not be able to vouch for it. Is it a karma
thing or can't one vouch for submissions?

~~~
stesch
I have the feeling it's something American that I can't really understand as
an European.

Last time I got flagged was a comment with a link to a picture of a Sikh with
a sign that said he writes bug free code. As some Americans mistake Sikhs with
Muslims that may have triggered something.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14209714](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14209714)

By the way: You can't post emojis here. Hacker News removes them from your
comments.

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bearbearbear
I don't understand why you need different colors of emoji.

Isn't yellow sufficiently neutral?

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PythonicAlpha
When politics come into play, technicians can only shake their heads ...

~~~
stesch
It must be politics why this post got flagged. ️

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BLanen
Least important issue ever.

Unicode has like a billion more spaces for characters.

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porfirium
That's not what the Skyrim face editor looks like. That game is heavily
modded. The real one is more like this:
[http://scalar.usc.edu/works/interactive-storytelling-
narrati...](http://scalar.usc.edu/works/interactive-storytelling-narrative-
techniques-and-methods-in-video-
games/media/2.1%20-%20Skyrim%20Character%20Creation.jpg)

